


Goodness Like a Gift

by WildWren



Series: One Time at Wessex College [1]
Category: The Last Kingdom (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, College AU, Dom/sub, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Emotional Abuse, Explicit Sex, F/M, Family Strife, Normal People homage, Normal People-esque, Not A Fix-It, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Sexual Harassment, Trauma, Victim Normalizing Abuse, alcohol use, sexual awakening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:14:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28051491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildWren/pseuds/WildWren
Summary: This is an Aethelrik College AU....that's also a Normal People homage...that's also about Emily Dickinson's poetry. This is not a fix-it. Multi-chapter, but it's not gonna be too long. Check additional warnings in the notes.
Relationships: Aethelflaed Lady of Mercia/Aethelred Lord of Mercia, Aethelflaed Lady of Mercia/Erik Thurgilson, Beocca/Thyra (The Last Kingdom)
Series: One Time at Wessex College [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2101398
Comments: 56
Kudos: 21





	1. danegeld // the price you pay to make it go away

**Author's Note:**

> Editing this A/N because I think I do actually know what the fuck this is now. 
> 
> This is a re-telling / re-interpretation / adaptation of the Aethelflaed x Erik story for a modern College AU. It's pretty raw and kinky. It deals a lot with emotional trauma. It gets into some edgy territory. It is not a fix-it. 
> 
> It has thematic/characterization overlaps with the book/show Normal People by Sally Rooney. Aethelflaed's character is, in some ways, a blend of canon Aethelflaed, Marianne, and Connell, so she's experiencing some things that are OOC for her in canon. 
> 
> Big shoutout to greenwillow for letting me rant at her about this and giving lots of good advice. 
> 
> Finally, some warnings for the entire story: Emotional Abuse, Dub-Con, Victim Normalizing Abuse, Explicit Sex, Oral Sex, Family Trauma, Family Abuse, Drug Use, Alcohol Use, Sexual Harassment, Misogyny, Dom/Sub, Domination Fantasy

“He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her .” - Sally Rooney, _Normal People_

**Wednesday // 12:35 pm**

“You’re really going to eat that?” 

Aethelflaed’s hand stalled on its way to her mouth. She let the grilled cheese fall back onto the plate with a wet clatter. 

“Well, I was planning to, but…”

Aethelred’s mouth curled over on itself. “It’s just…you had _waffles_ for breakfast, and you know — you’re going a little heavy on the carbs.” He made a dramatic wincing face, and Aethelflaed felt her appetite wane. 

Aethelred had been on this low-carb kick lately, all salads and hard-boiled eggs, and “I’ll take a ham sandwich but hold the bread” and grapefruit halves without _any_ sugar. Somewhere along the way, it had become something they were doing together, apparently.

But that was good, Aethelflaed knew. She needed to eat healthier. 

She pushed the plate of grilled cheese away from her. “I’m actually not really hungry anyway.” 

Aethelred gave a small nod of satisfaction, aggressively chewing his kale slaw, and Aethelflaed was left waiting for him to finish. 

Aethelred had been her boyfriend since…well, practically since orientation, if she really thought about it. It had all moved so fast. The friends had come first - the girls in the quad at the end of the hall. They’d adopted Aethelflaed into their group almost immediately (“God, she’s _adorable!”;_ “Look at her braids!”), and she had felt _so pleased_ to be included - to not be the lonely dork anymore, with parents who wouldn’t let her out past 9pm _on a weekend,_ the girl who’d kissed one boy in sophomore year and then never spoken to him again cause it was just….awkward. The girl who’d gone to prom with her mom’s friend’s son who went to a different school because, as her dad said, “we know he’s a respectable man.” 

No, Aethelflaed had left that life behind and found a whole new world, of boys and binge-drinking and beer pong, of pretty girls who told her what she should wear and who she should like. She didn’t mind that part of it. She even enjoyed it sometimes. And it was just so nice to be included. She’d never been part of clique before. 

Of course, they were a clique. They made an easy group with the boys in the opposite quad - Aethelred, Edward, Aldhelm, and Eardwulf. They were all rich kids, of a sort, although Aethelflaed thought Aldhelm might have gotten there on a merit-based scholarship. It was hard to say. He didn’t talk about it much. He mostly just laughed at Aethelred’s jokes and played the smart quiet type up to his advantage. Aethelflaed had kind of crushed on him, those first few days - his clever eyes, his shy smile - but then one of her friends had planted a different seed, and it had quickly taken root. 

“You should be with Aethelred,” she had said, holding a patterned sundress up to Aethelflaed’s body experimentally. She made a face and tossed it aside. “You guys would be so hot together.” 

It had been as simple as that, really. Of course she wanted to be with Aethelred. He was the cutest boy in the dorm. Who wouldn’t? And then it was just…arranged. It was if they had all made a pact, although Aethelflaed had never heard anyone speak about it outright. When they split into teams for drinking games, it was always Aethelflaed and Aethelred. When they rode in the shuttle to get downtown, it was Aethelred’s body against hers in the open seat. And when they sprawled out across their long table in the dining hall for every breakfast and dinner…Aethelred’s handsome face and his tray full of low-carb side dishes were always her most intimate view. 

She could still remember that first night - even though they’d all been drinking, _heavily._ Aethelred was next to her on the couch, while Eardwulf and Edward played Call of Duty on the boys’ gaming system. He was close - his leg brushing against hers, his arm around her shoulders but not quite touching her. The intimacy of it was both dulled and deepened by the presence of all the others around them. Aethelred was booing at Eardwulf and Edward, making fun of them as they died in increasingly dramatic fashions, and Aethelflaed was laughing at everything he said. 

And then…the game was over, and people were leaving the room - one at a time - each shooting meaningful looks over their shoulders as they left. Aethelred rolled his eyes at them and gave Aethelflaed a sharp smile, like she was in on the joke, but she wasn’t really sure if she was. She was feeling nervous, almost sweaty, like all of her skin was suddenly hot and ill-fitting. She wanted to edge away from him - the intimacy no longer felt so relaxed and easy, now that they were alone. 

But then he shrugged, and kissed her, and Aethelflaed realized that was what they were supposed to do. That’s why everyone had left - so that they could hook up. 

And that’s what she wanted, because Aethelred was the cutest boy in the dorm. 

It moved fast. Aethelred had pressed down on top of her, and they were kissing, and her shirt was off, and she was mostly just hoping she was doing it right and not embarrassing herself. He seemed to be into it, he seemed to be into _her_. He had already taken her pants off, and had his hand under the band of her bra, squeezing her breast so hard it almost hurt. 

“You’re on birth control?” He asked. 

“No…?” She laughed nervously. Was she supposed to be?

“Oh.” He looked a little frustrated, and Aethelflaed thought she might have messed something up.But then he was pulling a condom from his pocket and kicking off his pants. And it all moved so fast. 

“Wow, you guys _fucked_?” Her friend asked the next day, almost comical in her incredulity. 

Aethelflaed shrugged, trying to come off nonchalant. “Yea? I mean, it’s not a big deal or anything, is it?” 

_Isn’t that why_ _everyone left?_ she wanted to ask. But she didn’t. 

“No, it’s just….you must be really crazy about each other, huh?” 

“Yea, I guess.” It seemed like the right thing to say. 

“Was that…your first time?” 

“No,” Aethelflaed lied. “Of course not.” 

Her friend raised her eyebrows, looking at her with something like….renewed interest or newfound respect. Aethelflaed felt a small kernel of smugness in her chest and let it blossom. It was much more pleasant than the other aftertaste - confusion and shame. 

But that was last semester - months ago - and Aethelflaed had reaped the benefits of that night, and of that lie. Aethelred and her were the “it” couple in the freshman class. Aethelflaed wasn’t the wayward adoptee of the cool girls anymore. She was practically their leader. 

The only skeptic about it all was Hild. Hild, her wholesome roommate who spent every weekend on camping trips, or else doing community service downtown. She wasn’t part of the group, because she didn’t really party, but she wasn’t judgy about it. 

“It’s just not my thing,” she’d say. 

Hild was the friend who Aethelflaed could talk to about her assignments, about the things she was learning in her classes, and the topics she wanted to study. Pre-Law, maybe, or Literature. Her history seminar was amazing, but so was Biology 101, somehow. The professor had just been so great. Hild understood. She was the same - curious, passionate about so many things. The difference was, Hild wasn’t afraid to let people see it. Aethelflaed wondered how it was that she could be like that - how it was that she didn’t care what others thought of her. But she never said that. 

Hild was the friend who would make sure she was hydrated before going to bed, when she came back to their room cold drunk at 3am. And then the next day, they would smoke a bowl together, and watch Planet Earth, and Hild wouldn’t even laugh at her when she cried because the baby animal had died. 

Aethelflaed loved her. 

“So…have you and Aethelred broken up yet?” Hild would ask things like that sometimes. Aethelflaed did not love that so much. 

Aethelflaed would scoff, or laugh like it was a joke. 

“Tell me one thing that he actually knows about you,” Hild would say, pressing. 

“What? I…he’s knows everything about me, Hild. He’s my boyfriend!” 

“So…presumably…he knows about the stuffed bear you brought to college that you hide whenever he’s around because, that’s just a game you guys play?” 

A good cue for an eyeroll from Aethelflaed. “Of course not. That’s so embarrassing.” 

“I mean, not really.” 

“You don’t understand.” 

And Hild would just raise her eyebrow in that thoughtful, irritating way. “Evidently.” 

**Thursday // 10:45 am**

“What was the hold up?” Aethelred looked at her with unmasked frustration as she emerged, five minutes late, from the classroom where Odda’s lecture had just ended. 

She smiled at him, trying to brighten his mood. “I was just checking in with him, about my paper.” 

His mouth curled up a bit. “You know he’s not gonna give you an A just cause you smile at him.” 

It was a joke, she knew, so she laughed. But there was a little spark of resistance in her that flared up at his words. 

“Actually,” she said, looking at him sidelong. “He told me I already got an A. So, no smiles needed.” 

He was silent, but there was a sharp edge to his face. He bit his lip as if suppressing a laugh. 

“What?”

He scoffed. “I mean…it’s just such a cliché. Older professor - probably an alcoholic. Pretty freshman girl in his class. Of course he gave you an A.” 

He looked at her, his eyes leveled in that way that told her she was a few steps behind, as usual. 

“But — I thought…I thought you just said he wouldn’t give me an A cause of my looks?” 

“Don’t be so naive, Aethelflaed.” His voice was colder now. “Of course he wants to fuck you.” 

She was angry at the words. They felt…unfair. _Deeply_ unfair. But she didn’t know how to counter them without rousing his disdain further. She let it drop, but a ghost of shame haunted her throughout the day. 

**Friday // 4:30 pm**

“God, I love this part,” Thyra said, swirling in rhythm with the music. They were in Thyra’s basement room, listening to some Scandinavian folk-pop artist Aethelflaed had never heard of. Aethelflaed lounged on the room’s small couch, her bag nested in her lap. Beocca, Thyra’s R.A. boyfriend, rolled a joint in the corner. 

“Her voice is so good,” Aethelflaed offered. 

“Yea.” Thyra nodded. Her face was still blissed out, her mind lost in the rhythm of it. 

“Plans tonight, Aethelflaed?” Beocca asked, licking the joint closed with practiced finesse. He was one of those guys who’d gone bald before he reached 20, but somehow, it worked for him. 

“Yea. I think I’m going to a party at Aylesbury House?” 

“You think?” 

“Well yea, I mean, if that’s what everyone else is doing.” 

“Right.” 

Besides Hild, Thyra and Beocca were her only friends outside “the group.” She’d been kind of adopted by them too, she realized whenever she thought about. Thyra had been in her Art Therapy class, her sole elective in a first semester filled with seminars and pre-reqs. Aethelflaed had thought Thyra too weird for her own good at first. The girl _made her own clothes_ for Christ’s sake, and would giggle awkwardly into random moments of silence for no apparent reason. 

But she also brought homemade cookies to class, and always let Aethelflaed eat more than her share, and she drew little caricatures of the other students to make Aethelflaed laugh. Aethelflaed had warmed quickly, and Thyra’s room had become a comfortable stopping ground on the route between Winchester Hall and the Library, a warm haven of half-finished art projects and soft-glow twinkle lights. 

Beocca was simply a fixture; he came with Thyra. But Aethelflaed had grown to like him, too. 

“Things still working out with Aethelred, then?” Thyra asked, taking a puff from the newly lit joint. 

“Yea,” Aethelflaed, a little more defensively than was necessary. “Why wouldn’t they be?” Things had been cold with Aethelred since the other day, and Aethelflaed suspected it was her fault. 

“No reason.” Thyra shrugged and smiled. “I mean…I am a little surprised he’s lasted this long.”

“Why?” 

Thyra shrugged again. She was trying to be nice, but her lips were tucked into her mouth like she was also trying not to say the wrong thing. 

“Say it,” Aethelflaed said, rolling her eyes. 

“He just seems like someone with….shallow depths. If that makes sense. I would think you’d be….bored by now, I guess.” 

Thyra offered the joint to Aethelflaed but she shook her head. “Gotta go to the Library in a bit. Copy some stuff for my Lit assignment. You know I can’t hide a high to save my life.” 

Thyra laughed and handed it back to Beocca instead. Thyra wasn’t about to push her earlier point, but Aethelflaed felt awkward leaving it hanging in the air. 

“I mean…yea. We don’t really connect on…everything. But that’s okay. That’s what I have you guys for, right? And Hild?” 

“Sure,” Thyra said, but Beocca’s face was twisted with something like concern. 

“Plus, it’d be awkward. Like, with all my friends…and all the people on the floor. I mean…what would happen to the group? If we broke up?” 

Beocca snorted. “Well by all means, stay together forever. Wouldn’t want things to be awkward with the girls on your freshman dorm floor.” 

Thyra shot him a glare. “ _Beocca!_ ”

Aethelflaed laughed, even though Beocca’s words had made her flush a bit with embarrassment. They just didn’t understand. They were juniors, they’d made it through all the social politics of freshman year, they’d found each other, and… 

Aethelflaed fiddled with the strap of her bag, wanting very much to change the subject. “I should probably go,” she said after a moment. “You never know what you’ll find in the copy room.” 

“It’s true,” Beocca said grimly. “Hopefully not an electrical fire.” 

Aethelflaed laughed, grateful to feel the tension ebb from the room. “I’ll see you guys later?” 

“Have fun!” Thyra said, flopping back onto the bed with a lazy smile. 

“At the Library? Or the party?” 

“Both, whichever, I don’t know!” 

Thyra blew her a kiss, and she left. 

**Friday // 4:50 pm**

It wasn’t a long way to the library, but the late winter chill still bit at Aethelflaed’s face and hands as she walked across the narrow back quad. Little smears and piles of snow were strewn like pieces of laundry across the gray earth; the paths were edged with the slickness of half-melted ice. The warmth of the library hit her like a rush, raising the blood to her face. She took off her hat, and knew her hair must be a half-flattened, half-mussed mess, but she didn’t care. The library was a safe place. 

She wound through the back stacks to the reserve wall, and found her Lit class shelf at the bottom corner. She sighed with relief. _Poetic Meter and Poetic Form_ was still there - it hadn’t yet been swallowed by some desperate student thinking they could sneak away with it for “just a few hours.” She shuffled through the pages, skimming as she walked to copy room. So she didn’t notice, not until she was already halfway through the door. 

There was a guy in there - in the copy room. A guy who did… _not_ seem to be having a good day. 

“Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.” He held a stiff-covered library book in his hands and flipped through its pages with bitter urgency. 

“Copier not working?” 

He jumped, his eyes wide and startled at the sight of her in the doorway. 

“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” 

He looked vaguely familiar. Maybe she’d seen him at orientation. He wore a nondescript black hoodie, slightly too big, dark jeans tucked into very large combat boots. Was he a hipster? A druggie? A jock? She couldn’t quite pin him down. 

“It’s okay,” he said, and he cast the book onto the copy room’s small desk with a gesture of utter dejection. “It’s not broken. I’ve just spent the last hour copying sixty pages of the wrong chapter.” 

“Shit,” she said, in commiseration. 

He laughed, and ran a hand through his blond hair. It was cut in an almost-stylish fashion, longer on the top than the sides. He had a close cropped beard which framed his wide smile and fit well on his square face. 

He rifled through the copier’s outfeed tray, looking at the title on the top sheet. “You don’t want to read sixty pages about, uh…. ‘The Historiography of Danegeld in 10th century Britain’….do you?” 

Aethelflaed bit her lip, stifling a laugh. “Not particularly.” 

“Me neither.” He tossed the stack of papers in the recycling bin. 

“Wait!” Her heart panged for the wasted trees. “What if…it’s a later assignment or something?” 

“It’s not.” He shook his head ruefully. “It’s not even for my assignment.” 

“Ah. A…favor for a girl then?” She didn’t know why she said it. He seemed easy to tease. 

“No.” His face creased like he was affronted, but he still smiled. “No, it’s actually for my brother. Which probably makes me sound even lamer…” 

“ _No,”_ Aethelflaed laughed. “No, that’s actually kind of sweet. Your brother’s a student here, too?” 

“Yep.” 

“And…you do his homework for him?”

He snorted. “No. I don’t _do_ his homework for him. I’m just trying to… _inspire_ him. To do his own homework.” 

“I see.” 

They watched each other for a moment. The boy rocked on the heels of his boots. His hands swung at his sides. 

“So…are you gonna copy the chapter you need?” 

“Oh, right. Uh…it’s probably gonna take me another hour. You might want to go first…” 

Aethelflaed winced in regret, clutching _Meter and Form_ to her chest. “I _do_ only have twenty pages.” 

“Yep, yep.” He nodded decisively. “You should definitely go first. I need a break from that fucker anyway.” 

Aethelflaed snorted and eased up to the copier, rifling the book’s pages to the right spot. He crossed to the other corner of the room, and as he passed close she caught the smell of him - like the sweet saltiness of sea air. It took her off guard. 

“Thank you,” she said, a moment too late. 

For a while the only sound was the hum and sing of the copier as its mechanism slid back and forth beneath the screen. 

“So…what’s your assignment about?” 

Aethelflaed tossed a glance at him over her shoulder. He was looking at her with a curious, open expression. 

“Don’t you have enough assignments to worry about? What with your brother’s on top of your own?”

He made a gesture as if trying to shush her. “You’re gonna get me dragged up in front of the Academic Committee if you keep going on like that.” 

Aethelflaed rolled her eyes. 

“Well…” he said. “You could tell me about your assignment. Or we could just keep standing here in awkward silence. The choice is difficult, I admit.” 

Aethelflaed laughed despite herself. “It’s about 19th Century Women Poets. And innovations in form and style in their work.” 

“That sounds fascinating.” 

Aethelflaed looked at him sharply, certain that he was mocking her. But there was no hint of jest in his face. He was watching her as if the most interesting thing imaginable was about to come out of her mouth. It was deeply disconcerting. 

“Will you let me read it, when it’s done?” He offered in response to her silence. 

“You don’t want to read it.” 

“Why do you say that?” 

_Because college boys aren’t interested in reading papers about 19th century women poets._ That’s what she wanted to say, but on the second thought it seemed like a very stupid thing to say. And he clearly seemed to think she was interesting, and smart. She was strangely reluctant to lose his regard. 

“It’s the least you can do,” he was saying. “I _have_ given up the copier for you.” 

She couldn’t help but laugh. “Ooh, so now there are _conditions_. I didn’t realize.” 

“No, I…” he shrugged. “My mom used to read me Emily Dickinson poems. When I was kid. It’s been a while since I’ve read any. I dunno if your paper’s about her, but I…I’m just interested, I guess.” He laughed, but there was a sad edge behind it that caught her off guard. “I don’t know how many Lit classes I’m gonna get to take here.” 

Aethelflaed felt a flush rising behind her throat. She fussed over the copier for a few long moments, blinking rapidly to clear the emotion from her face. 

“You can read it, if you want,” she said, when she had gained control. “I don’t know you, though,” she added, and it came out more awkwardly than she would have liked. “I mean, I don’t know who you are. I’m sorry.” 

He smiled sheepishly. “I don’t know who you are either.”

“I’m Aethelflaed.” 

“Erik.” 

“Erik,” she repeated, nodding.

“Aethelflaed,” he mimicked. “It’s a cool name.” 

“Thanks.” She looked away, feeling like the moment had stretched to its breaking point. She was a little relieved when she turned to the last page of the chapter and got the copy out in a few seconds. 

“Well,” she said, tapping the stack neatly against the copier’s edge. “That’s me.” 

Erik nodded, his smile still wide and almost silly on his face. Or was it just honest? She couldn’t tell. He seemed to think she had something more to say. 

“….See ya…?” 

“Right, yea! See ya.” He scooted out of her way. “I’ll look forward to that paper.”

“Yea.” She laughed to cover her confusion. She couldn’t help but think there was a joke, and she had missed the punchline. 

But when she looked back through the glass of the door, he waved, and there was nothing but earnestness on his wide, handsome face. 

**Friday // 10:15 pm**

“Aethelflaed. _Aethelflaed!”_

“Hmm?” Aethelflaed looked up from the rim of her solo cup, where she’d been watching a drop of bubbled foam slide slowly down into the puddle of beer at the bottom. Aethelred was staring at her, his face carved in the unmistakable expression of “ _what the fuck?”_

“What’d I miss?” She asked.

“We’re up,” he said. “At the table.” 

She stalled for a moment, and he clapped - a sharp, low sound that made her jump. 

“Come on. They’re waiting!” 

“Yea. Right.” She abandoned her cup on an empty bookshelf and moved to follow him to the pong table. 

“You’re gonna need that,” he said.

“What?” 

“ _Your cup_.” He pointed at the shelf. “We don’t actually drink out of the cups, you know. That’s fucking disgusting.” 

“Right, yea, sorry.” She retrieved the cup and wound back over to his side. 

“Here,” he said, refilling it from a tallboy of Natty Ice in his hand until the liquid sloshed over the brim. 

“Thanks.” She sucked some of the foam off the top, and tried to ignore the slightly sick feeling in her throat at the taste. She fucking hated Natty Ice. 

“They’ve already set up,” Aethelred explained, and they took their places on one side of the long table, where a pyramid of cups had been arranged and half-filled with dirty water. Aethelflaed said nothing, waiting for the game to start, but Aethelred looked down at her with a sharp expression. 

“God, why are you being such a bitch tonight, Aethelflaed?”

“What?” She asked, genuinely surprised. He looked flustered and upset, as if she had actually wounded him. “I—I’m sorry. I’m just tired.” 

“Yeah. Okay.” He nodded and gave a not-smile smile, his mouth hard and his eyes widened sarcastically. He turned back to the game, and Aethelflaed knew it wasn’t really okay. 

She wasn’t tired, not really. She was just….distracted. She’d been thinking about her paper all night, about the sources she still needed to find, and about which poems she wanted to highlight. Well…she’d been thinking mostly about which Emily Dickinson poem she wanted to highlight, which was weird, because she hadn’t even been sure she was going to focus on Dickinson before today. 

But….but Erik was going to read it. So she wanted it to be good. And she wanted it to have Emily Dickinson. And she wanted it to be the right poem. 

Which just made no fucking sense at all. 

“WOO!” The sound startled her. Aethelred was cheering at himself, his arms held up in victory. “Fucking bounce shot, baby!” He crowed to the room at large. 

“Nice,” Aethelflaed said, trying to care. 

Aethelred just glared at her. 


	2. ambush // i'll make a fool of myself for you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aethelflaed finds herself avoiding Aethelred. A chance encounter leads her back to Erik's room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up that Aethelflaed’s family as characters aren’t related to her in this. So that’s how Edward can be a guy in her dorm, Alfred can be a Lit professor…really I should have had Aelswith be one of the girls who told to her to be with Aethelred, but I snoozed on that.
> 
> There’s also a lot of shout-outs here: to greenwillow again (I basically lifted their idea for a terrible class presentation to start this chapter - just with different characters, sorry I’m unoriginal trash!) Also, thanks to everyone who gave me ideas for Uhtred’s Shakespeare presentation. I went with “To Be or Not to Be” because I imagine Uhtred as a basic-ass bitch who literally does not know any Shakespearean monologues other than that one. 
> 
> I also came *very* close to breaking the space-time continuum in this chapter - yikes! All I can say is there is no logic as to why these people have crazy Anglo-Saxon names in this universe, and, like, it means absolutely nothing to them. 
> 
> CWs for the chapter: Gaslighting, Cheating, Explicit Sex, Oral Sex, Mild Kink

“Being alone with /him/ is like opening a door away from normal life and then closing it behind /her./” - Sally Rooney, _Normal People_

**ONE WEEK LATER**

**Friday // 11:30 am**

_“To be, or not to be, that is the question —_

_Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer_

_The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,_

_Or to take arms against a sea of troubles_

_And by opposing end them…_ ” 

Uhtred stood at the head of the class, reciting Hamlet with aggressively exaggerated iambic emphasis. Professor Alfred watched on with a blank stare, his hands steepled in front of his face, his elbows propped on the long Oak table of his desk. The presentation wasn’t really for Alfred’s benefit, Aethelflaed knew. She watched with distant amusement as Uhtred’s eyes kept flicking towards Gisela, where she sat in the corner with her pod of equally gorgeous, equally cool Sophomore friends. Aethelflaed couldn’t say whether it was working or not - Gisela’s face was as serene as ever, her hair coiffed in a perfectly messy braid, her outfit practically glowing with easy hipness.

It had been a weird week. If Aethelflaed really thought about it, she might’ve said it _fucking sucked_. But she tried not to think about it. 

Things continued to feel….sour with Aethelred, like something had gone foul between them, tinging every conversation they had with the slight taste of rot. She wanted to make amends, to figure out what was wrong, but every time she tried to talk about it, Aethelred acted like _nothing_ was wrong, and then she just felt worse for even bringing it up in the first place, as if that was the real problem. 

She had the vague sense that it wasn’t actually her fault, that it was Aethelred who was being petulant and foul. But it was hard to feel certain, especially when all her girlfriends seemed to think it was just a normal lover’s quarrel, and that she and Aethelred would figure it out soon and have crazy hot makeup sex for days. 

Aethelflaed didn’t know if makeup sex was in the stars. They'd already had sex twice that week, and she couldn’t be certain, but she was pretty sure it did _not_ qualify as “crazy hot." She had hoped it would make things better anyway, but it didn’t. 

She didn’t talk to Hild about it. She should have, she knew, because Hild would always tell her the truth. But that was the hard part of it, too. She didn’t want to be told that Aethelred was petulant and foul, that he was treating her badly, cause then what was she? Just a fool. Just a dumb girl with a shitty boyfriend. 

And Aethelflaed thought she’d rather be….anyone, rather than _that girl._ She’d rather be Uhtred, failing his Lit assignment in dramatic array in front of the whole class while Gisela’s friends giggled in the back. 

Well, maybe not quite. 

“ _…And enterprises of great pitch and moment_

_With this regard their currents turn awry_

_And lose the name of action.”_

Uhtred’s speech came to a close with dramatic syllabic stress. There was a long moment of silence as everyone, apparently, waited for him to actually say something about the speech. But he didn’t. One of his frat-boy friends wolf-whistled in jest and the moment broke. (A/N: Finan. It was Finan). 

“Thank you, Uhtred,” Professor Alfred said, in his dry, clipped tone. “For that presentation on…,” he looked down at his notes, sliding his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “erm…‘Iambic Pentameter in Shakespeare’s _Hamlet_.’ It appears I missed the presentation part, but the performance was also….adequate.” 

_Oof_. Nothing like the Alfred stare to make the blood run cold. Uhtred seemed unfazed as usual. That stare was the reason Aethelflaed had chosen a paper over a presentation for the assignment. She thanked her earlier self for that decision, even as she felt a slight pang of anxiety at the thought of a handsome blond boy ambushing her from behind a copier and demanding to read it. 

“Alright,” Professor Alfred was saying. “That wraps up our time with poetic meter and form. Thank you for all your…erm…hard work this unit. Next week we’ll be starting our two-week unit on the History of English Literature. If you’re thinking ‘two weeks is a woefully short time to devote to the History of English Literature,’ then I welcome you to intro class hell.” 

He gave his grim little smile. Aethelflaed was never sure whether it meant he was actually amused, or just deeply exhausted with them all. 

“And despite the rousing…erm…demonstration we were just given, we will _not_ be starting with Shakespeare, but earlier, in the Anglo-Saxon era. There may even be Vikings involved. But I make no promises.” And he held the class for just a moment longer before nodding. “You may go.” 

The room released like an out-breath. 

**Friday // 1:30pm**

Aethelflaed liked the library on Friday afternoons. It was almost always empty, as everyone else fucked off on their work in favor of the impending weekend. Aethelred had a class on Friday afternoons too, so the time was all hers. There was a peacefulness to the ritual of it. It eased her mind to get ahead on her assignments before the weekend’s madness began. 

She looked in the copy room when she arrived, just a glance through the door’s glass window. She performed it as an accident, something casual and unthought of, even though there was no one around to see her. Maybe she performed it for herself. 

But there was no one in there. She chided herself for the foolishness of it, as if he would just be lurking in there, waiting for her to show up. _Ambush averted_ , she told herself. And she told herself she was relieved. 

She made her way instead towards the South corner, near the end of the stacks. There was a great armchair there, facing a big window that looked out on the main quad. It was its own little nook, held from behind by a U-turn of shelves, and the chair was big enough that she could curl up in it entirely, slipping off her shoes and tucking them under her butt as she read. 

She settled in and pulled out the reading that Professor Alfred had assigned for next week’s lecture - “ _English in the Time of Alfred.”_ She did a little double-take: “ _King Alfred the Great and the Fight for an English Language Culture_ ” read the subtitle. She smiled, and dove in. 

She was half-lost in the story of it all - the start of English writing, its near loss through the destruction of churches by Viking raiders - when she heard the voices behind her. 

“—you made such a fool of yourself!” A woman’s voice.

A man: “Yea, but I made a fool of myself for you. I would do it again.” 

A laugh, then another sound like…. _oh God_. 

They were _kissing_ , they were kissing back there, at the back of the stacks, behind the U-turn of shelves that was currently sheltering Aethelflaed. She turned very slowly, peeking over the back edge of the armchair, and saw…Uhtred and Gisela, nestled against each other in the darkness of the corner. 

_Oh, God_. 

Aethelflaed turned back around, but she could still hear them, of course. And she couldn’t exactly leave now, or they’d see her go and know that _she’d_ seen _them_. It was the damn chair, she thought. They must not have known that she was in it. 

“I didn’t think you’d actually do it,” Gisela was saying. “Recite _Shakespeare_ in front of Alfred, in front of the whole class!” 

“Of course I did it. You think I’d back down from a dare like that? I do what my Lady commands.” 

Gisela laughed, and more kissing sounds sifted through the shelves. 

“But it was a joke, and now I feel bad. You’ll fail the assignment!” 

Uhtred scoffed. “Alfred will let me do extra credit. He likes me more than he lets on.”

“Oh, I’m _sure_ he does,” Gisela said, but the jest was gentle, and Uhtred was laughing, and…yep. They were kissing again. 

Aethelflaed felt an intense flare of secondhand embarrassment, or maybe it was firsthand embarrassment. She was embarrassed for herself, for being here, witnessing someone else’s intimate moment. She’d been around other couples, of course - the girls on her hall and their boyfriends, some little more than hookups or friends-with-benefits. And Beocca and Thyra - she’d seen the way they looked at each other, those little moments that made her feel suddenly alone in the room while they went somewhere else together. 

But she’d never really seen them like _this_. This was something else.

It brought a different feeling with it, one that was harder to wrap her mind around. It was like a taste lingering in the back of her throat. It was the silly-sweet quality of them, of Uhtred and Gisela, their joking and teasing and kissing. It was the sick, sudden sense that she had missed something. She had messed something up. 

Because she didn’t know how to do that. It wasn’t like that, with Aethelred. 

She looked back down at her reading, blinking very hard to contain the feeling rising in her throat. It was dread, thick, absolute, free-falling dread, and shame, too. It hit her like a punch, this feeling, like she had fucked up, like she had fucked up something so important, something that other people just knew, inherently, but that she had lost, or had never even found in the first place, it was —

“Oh!” 

Aethelflaed’s head jerked up at the sound, and she saw Gisela stumbling out into the alcove. Her face was flushed, her messy-perfect braid a little messier than normal. 

“Sorry!” Gisela said, laughing in embarrassment. “I didn’t — we didn’t know you were here!” 

Uhtred was following her, his face stricken with a look of amused shame. 

“Whoops…” 

“It’s okay,” Aethelflaed laughed, and it sounded thin and tinny. “I, um… I didn’t notice you,” she lied. 

“Oh.” Gisela’s eyes were narrowing, focusing in on Aethelflaed’s face, and she was terrified that she could see the fluster, the creases in her eyes where tears had started to well and still clung, half-dried. 

“See you around?” Aethelflaed said, almost forcefully. 

“Yea, sure.” Gisela turned to go with one last look, and then she and Uhtred were vanishing down the corridor, giggling at each other all the way. 

Aethelflaed sat for a long time, almost winded by the experience. Her hands lay stiff on her forgotten reading, and her mind grew languid in retreating from itself. She didn’t know how much time passed as she sat there, staring out the window as if in doing so, she could see the whole mess of her life stretched before her. 

But then she noticed him, out the window, walking across the quad in his lazy, confident way. He should’ve been in class, she knew. He must’ve skipped it. Aethelred’s head swung around, back and forth as he walked, and Aethelflaed realized he was looking for something. He was looking for her. 

She didn’t think. She got up, quick as a flash, and she moved away from the window, pulling her body behind a shelf and out of sight. She hid. She hid from Aethelred. And she didn’t think. 

**Friday // 3:35 pm**

Aethelflaed waited an hour after watching Aethelred pass before she dared to make her own way back to the dorm. It was ridiculous, she knew. It wasn’t like she could avoid him forever, sneaking past his door to her own room, staggering her meals so they would never run into each other. It was stupid, but she just needed time to think, or not to think. She needed time to decide what the fuck she was going to do. 

That’s when the ambush came. It wasn’t _really_ an ambush, just a chance encounter, but it startled her all the same, to see him appear in front of her out of the gray air, like a ship from the mist. 

Erik had on the same black hoodie, the same combat boots that he’d been wearing before, and a gray t-shirt with some graphic design she couldn’t quite make out. Aethelflaed was stricken with a shot of self-conscious worry. He looked comfortable and carelessly handsome, like a sun-polished stone, while she felt like a wrung-out sponge. 

Still, his eyes widened at the sight of her and he smiled as he approached. 

“Hey!” 

“Hey.”

They stood in awkward silence for a moment, then spoke at the same time. 

“Did you finish that paper —”

“How’d that assignment —”

They both stopped and laughed. Erik rubbed the back of his head with his hand. He seemed reluctant to speak over her again, and Aethelflaed forced her voice out to fill the moment. 

“I did finish that paper.” 

He smiled. “So you’ll let me read it then?” 

She tried to laugh in an unconcerned sort of way. Could he tell that she was breathless inside, spinning like a top beyond her own control? 

“You really want to read it?” She asked. She was in control. 

“Yea, I do.” His face was earnest, guileless in a way that almost set her on edge. 

“I don’t know why you’re so interested,” she said, and the words sounded tense as she felt. “It’s kind of weird.” 

She didn’t know why she said it. Maybe it was easier than admitting she had re-read the paper three times to make sure it was perfect, had even made Hild read it once, had even printed a second copy to keep in her bag, just in case Erik did take her up on it. But she watched his face fall, and she regretted the words. It was the kind of thing Aethelred would say, she realized, that way of clamping down on any interest too intense, on any behavior out the norm. 

“Hey…uh…” Erik looked away, his face a little red. “Listen, forget it about. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve been pushy —”

“No…” Aethelflaed said, tripping a bit over the word. She winced, painting her expression with the shame she felt. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t Erik’s fault she was a mess. “ _I’m_ sorry. You’re being really nice. I…maybe I could read one of your papers? Like…an exchange? I think I’d feel less weird that way.” 

Erik nodded, his smile returning. “Sure, yea. That’d be cool. I…I don’t —” he gripped his messenger bag and gave a playful grimace. “I don’t have anything on me…right now.” 

Aethelflaed raised an eyebrow. “No illicit academic contraband?” 

“No,” he laughed. “Umm…” he put his hands in his pockets and his eyes shifted over her. “My room’s just over there, in Benfleet? Behind the science building? I could go grab something, or…you could come…if you want?” 

There was something about the whole thing that was painfully awkward, the awkwardness stretched even further by Aethelflaed’s desperate mood. And still, it was so innocent, and still, it was painful, too, in its innocence. 

_I made a fool of myself for you._ Uhtred’s words echoed back at her. And here was Erik, and he was a little foolish, but no one had ever been a fool for her before. 

“Sure, yea,” she said. “I’ll come with you.” 

He beamed at her, and she felt it like a swift swoop of bird’s wings in her belly. 

**Friday // 4:00 pm**

Erik’s room was nestled in a dark corner of Benfleet Hall’s first floor. The key stuck and he had to jiggle it a few times before the door popped open with a metallic crunch. 

“Fucking locks,” he said, and he laughed, as if in apology. The room was surprisingly sparse, and Aethelflaed realized that one side of it was abandoned. A bare stained mattress sat in the far corner, framed by an angle of wall shockingly free of any of the usual college dorm decor: Pink Floyd posters, stolen street signs, tie-dyed wall tapestries. 

“No roommate?” Aethelflaed asked. Erik was hurrying around tucking up little piles of dirty laundry and stacks of papers into slightly neater little piles and stacks. 

“No,” he admitted. “The guy dropped out after two months, and they haven’t replaced him yet. I’m gonna take over that side if no one shows up soon.” 

“For some reason, I’d thought you’d live with your brother. 

“No.” Erik laughed. “No, he’s an upperclassman. He lives off-campus.” 

Aethelflaed nodded, twirling in a self-conscious way as she took in the space. The other corner was crowded with Erik’s bed, a desk, a small futon, and…the fanciest flat-screen TV she’d ever seen fixed to the wall like a billboard. 

“Christ,” she said before she could stop herself. A complex console of plastic-cased boxes blinked out green light below. “You really into gaming, or something?” 

“Not really.” Erik seemed embarrassed. “ I mean, a little, but —not like…that. My dad bought it all for me,” he explained, after a pause. “He thought….he thought everyone would have shit like this here. I tried to explain, but, you know.” 

Aethelflaed fixed her gaze on Erik with a new curiosity. He hadn’t struck her as a rich kid…not at all. He was about as different as it was possible to be from Aethelred. And Aethelred’s parents owned a _third_ house on Martha’s Vineyard. 

“What does your dad do?” She asked, hoping she didn’t sound too nosy. 

Erik waved his hand. “Oh…he’s in…business. He just — he never went to college, and —it doesn’t matter.” He was shuffling through a stack of papers on the desk, and Aethelflaed got the sense that he wanted to change the subject. She let it drop. 

“Hey, so I probably should’ve told you,” he said, fishing a stapled clump of papers out of the stack. “It’s not really an essay or anything. It’s more like…a lab report?” He winced, handing it out to her apologetically. 

She laughed, a sharp, loud noise. “ _A lab report?!”_

“Yea…you know, oceanography and stuff. From my Environmental Science class.” 

She narrowed her eyes at him. “That’s false advertising. I don’t want to read your damn…lab report!” 

They both laughed, and it felt good. It eased some of the awkward tension in the air, and the tension that stretched in her own gut. 

“Fair enough…” Erik let the paper drift down lazily onto his desk again. “Wait—!” He opened a drawer. “I’ve got something else, something better. It’s from last semester, but I think you’ll like it.” 

He handed her a different essay, and she took it this time, sinking tentatively onto the edge of the futon to read it. The header marched across the top corner of the page. 

_Erik Thurgilson_

_Comparative Mythology Seminar_

“Damn,” she said. “I wanted that seminar. Got my second choice instead.” 

“Sorry. It was a good class.” 

Aethelflaed scanned down to the title: “ _Conceptions of the Moon in Northern Myth and Folklore._ ” 

She raised her eyebrows and gave him a speculative look. “Sounds interesting.” 

He smiled as if he was truly pleased to have interested her. She felt a little flush of heat in her chest. Why did he have to smile so much like… _that_? 

“I thought you’d be interested. There’s some crazy shit in there!”

Aethelflaed laughed, trying to let the fluster pass. 

Erik flopped down on the opposite end of the futon, stretching his long legs out and pillowing his hands behind his head. He was about as far from her as it was possible to be on the small couch. But it was a small couch.

“I wish you’d been in the class,” he said. “It would have been cool, I mean — to have you in it.” 

“Yea.” She looked back down at the paper, worrying the edge of her thumbnail with her teeth. 

Erik was silent was a while, tapping his feet against each other in a quiet rhythm, letting her read. She was trying to read, but the words kept sliding in one side of her mind and out the other. She knew the hook was a story about the moon and a wolf or something like that. She didn’t know if the moon was chasing the wolf or the wolf was chasing the moon. The problem wasn’t Erik’s writing. It was her own brain, gone slightly jellied. Her mind was fixed on the fact that she was alone in this room, with some random guy she barely knew and…what? 

And she didn’t mind, that was the thing. It was nice, even — the knowledge of his body across from hers on the futon. His presence was very gentle. She looked up and gave him a shy smile. 

“You —” his face twisted a little as he spoke. “You have a boyfriend, right?” 

The easy moment shattered, and Aethelflaed felt something tense and defensive rise inside of her. It was as if Aethelred forced himself into the room and made everything sour. “I thought you didn’t know me,” she said. 

“I didn’t —” Erik stammered, his face flushing. “I don’t — I mean…I’ve seen you around, of course. I mean…it’s hard not to notice you.” 

“What’s that mean?” Aethelflaed was very aware of her cheeks, of her throat, of her hands. She did not know what to do with her hands. They continued to clutch Erik’s paper with a rigid grip. 

“What’s what mean?” 

“What do you mean, it’s hard not to notice me?” 

He took a breath, looking around the room as if hoping someone would show up to aid him. “I mean…you’re like, one of the prettiest girls around here. You have to know that.” 

Aethelflaed felt very stiff. She placed his paper lightly down on the couch between them. Erik rubbed his face with his hands. 

“Listen…forget it, sorry. Maybe I could look at your paper now?” 

“You don’t want to read my paper! You’re just trying to make a move on me!” 

“I do want to read your paper,” he assured. “Really.” 

“You didn’t even try to deny it.” 

“What?”

“That you’re trying to make a move on me!” 

Erik let out a breath and looked at her, his eyes wide and guileless again. “Do you want me to make a move on you?” 

Aethelflaed swallowed, shocked into silence. She glanced down at her hands, back at his face. His arms were crossed stiffly over his chest as he looked at her. 

“I….” She floundered. The words were stuck in her throat - there were no words. She felt like a car stalling to start. 

_Just say something, Aethelflaed!_

Erik broke the moment, looking down at the floor. “If you want to leave, I understand, I’m sorry…if I forced you back here, or —”

“No — you didn’t,” she said. “You didn’t force me.” She felt stupid for her outburst. She wished she could erase it, rewind the moment. "You want me to leave?” 

His eyes came back up to hers, deep and unfathomable. “Well…I’d be happier if you stayed. But that’s not really what matters, is it?” 

Aethelflaed tried to smile, tried to paste over the tension with forced ease. She picked Erik’s essay back up. “I want to read the rest of it, later. If that’s okay.” 

“Yea, take it. I don’t need it anymore.” 

They stayed like that, stuck in reluctant silence for a long time. 

Erik spoke first. “I know it’s not my place, but…I can’t help but wonder. Why’s it so hard for you to believe that someone would actually care what you have to say? That I would care — what you have you say?” 

_Don’t be so naive, Aethelflaed_. Aethelred’s voice rode through her head, bringing with it an echo of shame. 

“Cause you don’t know me.” 

“Well….this is me trying to know you. Obviously.” 

_He just wants to fuck you_. Aethelflaed pushed the voice away. When had Aethelred tried to know her? It seemed like a silly question until she realized she couldn’t answer it. 

She tried to find her grip in the conversation again. “Are you always so honest?”

Erik raised his eyebrows. “Are you always so cagey?” 

_Cagey_. Is that what this was? This feeling, like she didn’t want to speak or act or even move, for fear of messing up, for fear of being laughed at by…what? _By a boy she wished would like her._

Well, fuck, if that wasn’t the whole mess of it. 

She let out a breath like a laugh. 

“You never answered my question,” he said. His body was more relaxed now. She thought he might have moved a little closer. Or perhaps it was she who had edged closer to him. 

He smiled in his bright, easy way. “Actually…I’m not sure if you’ve answered any of my questions. You just bat them back at me like a pro tennis player.” 

He was teasing her, but he wasn’t laughing at her. She could tell the difference, now. He was trying to be kind. 

“What question was that? In particular?” 

He coughed, brought a hand up to rake through his beard. “Um…do you want me to make a move on you?” 

He was definitely closer now. She could see his chest rising and falling, the fabric of his gray T-shirt shifting across his collarbone with each breath. There was the smell again - sweet and sharp like seawater. _How did he smell like that?_

“Cause…I can’t help but notice that you’re still here.”

Aethelflaed bit her lip. “Oh, and that’s the only reason I could have for sticking around?” 

“Well, you _clearly_ don’t want me to read your paper —”

She didn’t think. She kissed him. She kissed him, and she didn’t think about it, because if she thought about it, she’d become stuck and frozen in the strange cage of her mind. 

She kissed him and made a little noise like a whimper of relief. He caught her face, smiled against her mouth. They were stretched uncomfortably towards each other, trying to broach the couch’s length with their bodies. Erik pulled her closer, wrapping his arm around the base of her back. His other hand was in her hair, fingers soft on her neck as he tilted her head up and kissed her more deeply. And it was easy not to think. 

There was urgency in it, but tenderness too. Aethelflaed had the feeling she could pull away at any moment and he would let her go with a laugh and a smile. 

But that was exactly why she didn’t want to pull away. 

She pushed against him instead, pressing him back into the couch and hooking her leg over his so that she straddled his lap. He gasped and laughed, stared up at her with a wide and unabashed smile. 

“What?” She asked, a little breathless. 

“I — I’m just so happy this is happening.” 

She smiled back at him and angled her body over his. She lifted his hands and placed them on her breasts. He groaned, his eyes becoming heavy with need. 

“Me too,” she said. 

He pulled her back into him, catching her mouth with his own and wrapping his hands around her hips so she was fixed, rocking against him with the motion of the kiss. 

They kissed for a little while, and it was urgent and tender, and it all felt _so good_ , and she didn’t think of Aethelred. She didn’t think of him as Erik slipped his hands under her shirt, as she pulled it off over her head and let him kiss the tops of her breasts where they swelled from her bra. She didn’t think of him as Erik lifted her and laid her on the bed, as she took his shirt off so that his naked chest could press against hers. Not when Erik unclasped her bra, his hands warm and tender on her skin. Not when she pulled her own pants down over her thighs so he could slide two fingers inside of her, making her arch against him like the crest of a wave. Not when the pleasure came hot and fast within her…

“I have a condom.” Erik’s voice was low and hoarse in her ear. “If that’s what you want. Is that what you want?” 

She thought of Aethelred then, the shadow of a memory in the back of her mind. 

“Yea,” she said, pushing hard into his hips. “I do, yea.” 

She had never been asked before. 

**Friday // 5:15 pm** ****

They lay side-by-side in his bed, tucked under the blankets, naked skin carefully covered by sheets. They had just had sex - they had just had _really good_ sex, Aethelflaed thought. Erik had just been _inside_ of her. And yet, there was some weird frontier still left uncrossed, some untested edge hovering between them. She realized that they could just… get up, get dressed, move on like it hadn’t happened. She could do that if she wanted. 

But Aethelflaed shifted slightly, self-consciously, angling her body so that her back lay against Erik’s chest, her head held along his shoulder. He sighed and relaxed, wrapping his arms around her. He placed a few nervous kisses on her neck. 

“That was nice,” he said quietly.

“Yea.” 

It had been nice. It had moved fast - Aethelflaed didn’t really know how else to do it. But there was something different about it, too, different than with…Aethelred. Aethelflaed let his name bob in her mind like a cork, but she didn’t pick it up. With Erik, they’d been…together, they’d been _with each other,_ they’d been doing… _something_ together. It made no sense. Wasn’t that what all sex was? But it felt different, somehow. 

Erik was kissing her neck again, more slowly this time, less lost in the nervousness. She leaned into it and groaned, opened her throat to him, pressed his head tighter against her skin. 

They both jumped at the sound of the text alert. It came from her pants, discarded with her phone still in the pocket. She scrambled up to grab it, still careful to keep the sheet wrapped around her, still aware of her nakedness and the almost-painful intimacy of it all. 

“You probably have to go, huh?” Erik was saying.

“Mmmm.” She was distracted by the message on the screen. 

**Reddy** _where are u???? dinner???? party with rugby team tonight._

**A’s iPhone** _sorry…_

She typed out the word and let her thumb hover over the “Send” button. Erik was shifting behind her, pulling his boxers and pants on over the edge of the bed. She watched how the skin of his back moved, his shoulder blades pulling together and apart. She felt an intense urge to touch him again, to slide her hands over him, around and down the hard lines of his abdomen…

**A’s iPhone** _sorry… at the library_ , she finished and pressed send. 

**A:** _just got an extension on a project, gotta finish tonight_

**A _:_** _probly gonna be an all-nighter_

**A:** _sorry_

The little dots next to Aethelred’s name bounced for a long time. Erik was already dressed, his blond hair sticking up a messy way. He smiled at her, but there was a little sadness around the edges of his face.

The message finally came through. 

**Reddy** _wtf_

**Reddy** _fine. whatever._

She knew it should have made her anxious - lying to him, forcing herself in a corner she couldn’t get out of. Despite her anger, despite the strange, powerful disgust for Aethelred that had risen inside of her, she still knew she should have felt guilty. But she only felt relief. 

She cast the phone facedown on the bed and looked back up at Erik. 

“I could walk you back to your dorm if you want?” he said. The sadness had retreated. Just his gentle smile remained. 

“Um…” Aethelflaed had a sudden pang of worry. What if he wanted her to leave? Then she’d really have to stake out in the library all night, pretending to do work, feeling like an utter idiot about the whole thing…

“…actually…I could stay? If you want?” 

Erik’s eyes widened, and he looked around shiftily, as if expecting a joke. “Really?” 

“Yea?” She gave a shy smile. “I mean, not if it’ll put you out…if you’ve got stuff to do —”

“No! No, I’d like that.” 

They smiled at each other for a long moment, both happy with the decision, both unsure what should come next. Aethelflaed was intensely aware that Erik was fully dressed, while she was still naked and wrapped in a sheet.

“You wanna get some dinner?” He offered. “The dining hall should be open by now.” 

“I, um…I can’t.” She winced. This was the moment when it could all start splintering around her - this fragile, stupid little desire that had taken over her. “I’m kind of…trying to fly under the radar…? With my friends, and…” 

“And your boyfriend?” 

Aethelflaed swallowed, looked away. “Yea.”

Erik was silent for a while, and Aethelflaed couldn’t bring herself to look at his face. She felt a flush of heat creep up her neck, where her skin met the air, where she sat, open and vulnerable to his gaze and his judgment. 

But he was moving away towards the bookshelf, rummaging through a bin. After a moment, he brandished a ramen cup, smiling. 

“There’s a microwave down the hall,” he said. “And…I’ve got some granola bars…and…oooh, some fruit-roll ups that expired last year.” 

She laughed with relief, and true pleasure. “Sounds like a feast.” 

**Saturday // 9:30 am** ****

Aethelflaed almost didn’t want to look at her phone. It was easier to stay in the warm cocoon of blanket, the feeling of Erik’s chest rising and falling against her. She felt like she was in a very delicate bubble, and it was about to pop. 

Erik shifted, turning over and away from her, but he didn’t wake. His hair was half-fallen across his face, his forehead creased by a dream. She thought his light beard had come in a little thicker since the day before, and she wondered how often he shaved. She wanted to touch it, to touch his face, his jaw, the rough edge of him where he was still a little unfinished. Where the world pressed up to him and found a messy line. But she didn't touch him. She let him sleep instead. 

They’d had sex twice more the night before. It seemed they couldn’t stop. They’d had sex more than they’d talked even, but they’d talked through the sex, too, which was something new. Erik had asked her other things, things like “is that good?”, “do you like that?”, “do you want more?”, and every time it was like the words themselves could raise her pleasure, could send her to the edge of it. She hadn’t known words could do that. She thought she’d figured out how to make it slow, how to make it last, how to draw it out to fill the time like a game. Or maybe it was Erik who made it slow. She wasn’t sure. 

When they’d collapsed, spent and sweating, lazy with relief, drunk on the intimacy that had bloomed between them quick as a storm…it had made perfect sense to spend the night there, to sleep beside each other like true lovers. And Aethelflaed had not allowed herself to think, not allowed her mind to reach beyond the comfort of the moment.

So now they were here, and somehow that bubble still clung around them, so delicate, as if just a breath could break it. Aethelflaed didn’t want to move for fear of its loss. 

But the phone buzzed, and she couldn’t ignore it anymore. She sat up slowly and lifted it off the bedside, gingerly, as if peeling back a scab. 

It was only Hild. 

_**Hild** : Where are you?? Are you okay?? You didn’t come back to the room last night??_

_**A’s iPhone** : yea, sorry, im fine._   
_**A** : u didnt talk to aethelred, did u?_

_**H** : No? Should I have?_

_**A** : no._   
_**A** : listen…_   
_**A** : can u do me a favor?_

_**H** : …_

_**A** : if he comes to the room…tell him im sick?_   
_**A** : tell him im vomiting and he cant come in_   
_**A** : he hates puke, he wont come in_

_**H** : Aethelflaed._   
_**H** : What the actual hell is going on?_

_**A** : nothing! its all good. im just avoiding aethelred._   
_**A** : I thought youd be happy._

_**H** : Of course I’m happy about -that-._   
_**H** : But this feels weird._

_**A** : its not weird, its all good, i promise!!!!!_   
_**A** : can u just do it for me???_   
_**A** : please?????_

_**H** : If Aethelred comes to the door, I’ll tell him you’re sick._

_**A** : i love you so much thank u thank u i will kiss u !!!_

_**H** : I thought you were vomiting. :/ :/ :/_

_**A** : :* :* :*_

“Duty calls?” 

Aethelflaed startled a bit. Erik was awake, his head propped up on one hand as he watched her quietly. She put the phone back down on the nightstand and turned to face him. 

“Not really.”

He smiled, lifted a tentative hand, touched her collarbone where it emerged from the loose T-shirt of his she’d worn to sleep. 

“You hungry?” he asked. 

“What did you have in mind?” 

“Well….the fruit roll-ups are calling.”

Aethelflaed snorted. “Hmmm…as delicious as that sounds…” She leaned in and kissed him a few times on his bare chest. 

“Ummm…” he said, his voice half distracted with a sigh. “I could go to the dining hall? Bring us back something? You don’t have to come. If that’s what you want — if you wanna stay here, I mean.” 

She smiled, even as a sour knot turned itself tighter in her stomach. She did want to stay. And she wanted to eat - real food, not Cup of Noodles - and she wanted to have sex again, and she wanted the entire rest of the world to just go away. 

But the room was the bubble. And if Erik left, even just for a little while, she knew that something would break. Something would shatter. This thing that was happening - it only existed _here_ , and she couldn’t let it go, not yet. 

“I’m not really hungry, actually,” she said. She was used to skipping meals. She’d live. “I’d really love a shower though.” 

His eyes swelled over her, suddenly full to their depth, and she wondered if he was thinking of her, naked in the shower. She didn’t mind it. She liked the thought of him thinking of her, and wanting her. 

“Yea, sure. There’s a shower caddy and a towel over there.” He pointed to the corner by the door. “I think it’s clean,” he added, wincing. 

“I’m not picky.” 

She eased up to move off the bed, but Erik reached for her, stalling her. She turned to him, paused, and he was staring down at her hand, fiddling at it with his own, tracing the edges of her fingers. And they just did that for a few moments, together. 

He looked up at her finally, his eyes narrowed with an unspoken question, his mind half-revealed in the shape of his smile. 

“Don’t ask,” she said.

“Ha,” he said, and she knew she had read him well. “You don’t know what I was—”

“Don’t ask what this is. What’s happening here. I don’t…I don’t know what this is. Please. Just…don’t ask.”

He smiled, but it was wry, uncomfortable, self-effacing. “Okay. Yea, okay.” He nodded, blinking the expression off his face. 

“I’ll be back in a bit,” she said, and she kissed him very lightly on the lips, conscious of her unclean mouth. He nodded again, his eyes shuttered. 

She pulled away, swinging her legs over the bed’s edge. She slipped on yesterday’s pants and left his t-shirt hanging on her shoulders like an oversized blanket. 

“You want me to show you the way?” He asked.

She threw him a smile over her shoulder. “I think I can manage.” 

**Saturday // 10:20 am** ****

Aethelflaed felt renewed, like a garden after rain. Even with Erik’s weird boy soap — he only had _one_ product for body wash, shampoo, conditioner, all of it — she felt better for it. There was even an old tube of toothpaste in the caddy, and she managed to squeeze the last bit of it out onto the corner of the towel and give her teeth a rough brushing. 

She walked down the hall clad only the towel, her clothes bunched up beneath her arm, and she didn’t feel embarrassed, not even when two guys leaving their room gawked at her for a brief moment as she passed. She merely smiled, gave them a cheery wave, and continued on her way. 

There was something new about her, something she was just starting to feel the edges of in herself. She was like a tool, newly carved, chiseled into being. The shower had brightened her, burnished her, but it had not done this. It had not made this feeling. This had come before, with Erik, in the space between them, when she had shaped something new out of the chaos of her life and been shaped by it in return. Now she wanted only to twist, and touch, to work into the world, to the inside of it, where the realness of it lay. She thought she could lose herself there and never be found. 

Erik looked up from the couch when she walked in, then did a double-take at the sight of her - half-naked, her wet hair streaming down her back. He shut his laptop and slid it carefully onto the desk next to him. 

“You need some clothes?” He asked. “I have some smaller t-shirts that might fit better.” 

He looked freshened too, like he had washed his face or combed his hair. Maybe he’d been lurking in the Men’s Room across the hall. She smiled, stood for a moment saying nothing. Then she shrugged and walked over to him. “Not yet.”

“Oh.” His eyes flicked up and down her body, and it set her stomach turning with a nervous pleasure. He was stiff, frozen almost like a statue, as she sat down on his lap, wrapping her hands around his neck and letting the towel fall open. 

“Oh,” he said again. 

They kissed, and Erik’s mouth tasted like toothpaste, and Aethelflaed was grateful for her own clean mouth. His hand came up to hold her breast, and the motion knocked the towel down, so it pooled around her hips, and slid off onto the floor. She was naked against him, and she liked it, she liked being naked while he sat fully clothed beneath her. She liked serving up her body for him and knowing how much he wanted it. She took his hand and brought it between her legs, and he groaned as his fingers pushed inside her.

“God, Aethelflaed.” Her skin was still wet, dewy with drops of water from her hair, and he kissed them off her as he spoke against her neck. “This is so fucking hot, you know that?”

She laughed. “Yea.” 

She let him touch her, let him feel his way inside of her, slow and then fast until she started to build with it. Then she pulled away and slid down off of him, so she could kneel between his legs. She heard his breath come fast and shallow as she unbuckled his belt, pulled down the band of his boxers, took him in her mouth. 

“Fuck,” he breathed. “Holy shit, Aethelflaed.” His hands were gentle in her hair. She looked up at his face - his mouth, slightly open, his forehead creased, his blue eyes wide as he stared at her in surprise…or wonder. She moaned with the pleasure of pleasing him. 

“Oh my god,” he said, again and again. 

She pulled away, licked her lips, watched his eyes swim at the sight of it.

“Stay,” she said.

Erik swallowed, nodded. She walked over to the bedside table where she knew the little tin of condoms lived and fished one out. 

“You’re running out,” she said, looking back at him. 

He laughed, and the sound was a little unhinged. “I didn’t exactly expect to have sex more than….five times this weekend.”

He was flustered, his pants still down, his erection stiff against the waist of his jeans. She drank in the sight of it, the undone-ness of him, undone because of her. There was something dizzying about it, the power of it, to know she could affect him, that she could change him like this. She was a tool, and he was open to her. 

She walked back, tearing the wrapper open with her mouth. 

“Sorry for the hindrance,” she said, as she rolled the condom down the length of him. 

“You know that’s not what I meant.” Erik pulled her back onto his lap, and she slid against him, onto him, letting him sink deep into her. They were both still for a moment, struck by the feeling of it, but the sight of his face shot through her like a spark, and she had to move. 

“Is that good?” She asked the questions he had taught her. “Do you like that?”

“Yea,” he was saying. “God, yea.” He kissed her breasts, held her hips tight in his hands. They fell out of rhythm in their urgency, and he slipped out of her, then back in at a rough, hard angle. Then there was the feeling of his hand between them, righting himself, holding himself where their bodies met, and his knuckles hard against the open wetness of her…

She was lost in his pleasure. It was different, with Aethelred. She had wanted to please him, to please Aethelred, but that was an impulse that lived outside of herself, made by someone — something — else. It was like an animal that needed feeding. 

This….this was different, this was a seed within her, and she had planted it with the tool of herself. It belonged only to her, to her and Erik. It was watered by the sound of him, by the heat of him beneath her. It was hers, only hers, she couldn’t lose it, it belonged to her, and still, she gave it to him, and she gave it to him, and lost nothing when she did. 


	3. hostage // you're free to leave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik and Aethelflaed push new frontiers in their affair and have an unpleasant experience at a party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, just want to warn you that this chapter gets a bit intense. I’m honestly not even really sure how to tag it. I’ve done my best below. There’s some kink, a good dose of connective emotional sex, and also some choices/behavior that are coming from a place of escalating avoidance, and therefore not the most ideal mental/emotional state. There’s also a pretty intense moment of sexual harassment/aggressive misogyny (you’ll know when it’s coming), and descriptive language about trauma response. Take care of yourselves pleeeeeease, and I totally understand if this is not the content for you. 
> 
> CWs: Continued Cheating (on Aethelred), Explicit Sex, Sub/Dom Kink, Rough Sex, Hints of Family Trauma/Family Abuse, Hostage Kink, Mild Exhibitionism, Sexual Harassment, Misogyny, Trauma Response/Avoidance, Complex Mental/Emotional Health

“How strange to feel herself so completely under the control of another person, but also how ordinary. No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not.” - Sally Rooney, _Normal People_

**Saturday // 12:30 pm**

Erik dropped the bag down on the bed. The plastic film stretched and bulged, and a rip had started opening in the bottom. 

“I felt bad using more than one,” he said, laughing at himself as the contents spilled out over the blanket. 

He had gone to the deli-mart around the corner for rations. Aethelflaed had let him go - it was off-campus, she told herself, it was just a block and a half away. The bubble could stretch that far, she thought, it had to. Plus, they did _really_ need some food. 

“For you,” he said, offering up a long deli sandwich wrapped in foiled paper. 

“Oh my god.” Her stomach cramped with painful need at the sight of it. “Thank you.” She unwrapped it with a desperate urgency that would have been embarrassing if she’d been less hungry. Or maybe it was just hard to be embarrassed as Erik took each item out of the bag with a flourish and arranged it carefully on the bed, as if in dramatic tableau. 

“Chips,” he said, unveiling the bag of Tostitos like a street magician or an old-timey salesman. 

“Pringles.” He added them to the arrangement. “Which I know are also chips, but I got a little turned around in there and… just starting adding things to the basket.”

Aethelflaed laughed around a bite of her hoagie. 

“Cookies - dessert course.” He brandished a pack of Chips Ahoy. “Reese’s - second dessert course.” His face fell a bit as he took in his Last Supper diorama of snacks. “Yea, I’m realizing now that this is all absolute junk.” 

“No, it’s great,” Aethelflaed insisted. 

“The deli-mart is…not exactly known for its health food section.” 

“This is perfect, really. What else you got in there?” There were a few more bulges remaining in the now-tattered plastic sack.

He smiled, taking out a six-pack of fancy-ish local beer. “For later, if we want it.” 

Aethelflaed raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You have a fake I.D.?” 

“Yea.” He nodded distantly. “A few, actually.” 

“Wow. International man of mystery.” 

He laughed, but then spoke again quickly, moving on from the moment. “I’ve got some whiskey here, too. I don’t know how much you like to drink…”

“That all sounds nice,” she said, and it did. It was a little weird, to think about getting drunk together, just the two of them, but it was pleasant too, pleasant in its weirdness. 

“What’s…that?” She asked, nodding to the last thing remaining in the bag. 

Erik’s hands twitched a bit, stalled on the bag. He looked up at her with a shy expression. “Um…I wasn’t sure. The 40-pack felt a bit ambitious…” and he pulled out a 20-pack of Trojan condoms. “But I just really wanted to avoid going back for more anytime soon. This seemed like a good compromise.” And he shrugged and smiled, in a questioning sort of way. 

Aethelflaed laughed, hoping to ease him.He was nervous. He was nervous because he’d bought twenty condoms and didn’t want her to think he was being presumptuous. 

“I think you did well. On all of it.” 

Erik’s face cleared. “Really?”

“Yea. A++.”

“Thank God.” 

They smiled at each other, caught up in the easy intimacy of it all. She thought he would eat, unwrap on his own hoagie and dig in. 

But he was twitching again, his eyes flicking towards the door. In a breath, he was up, moving towards it, locking it. The bolt slid into place with a resonant thunk. He stood there for a moment and looked over his shoulder at her, his face furrowed with concern. 

“I’m not —- I’m not locking you in here or anything. I know that’s kind of weird. It’s just, guys on the floor sometimes show up, walk in unannounced, and I…” 

Aethelflaed swallowed, feeling some of his nervousness settle in her chest like secondhand smoke. “I understand.” 

“I’m not, like…assuming that you want to stay. You don’t have to stay. You can go, if you want.” 

She placed down her hoagie on the foil wrap and looked at him steadily. 

“I don’t wanna go.” 

Erik kept staring at her, and she noticed something brittle in him for the first time. It was well-buried, well hidden beneath his easy, open face, his warm smile. But in that moment, she saw a different edge of him, hard and nervous. Maybe he was letting her see it, or maybe he just couldn’t hide it. 

It didn’t scare her — not the sharpness of it. It was a relief almost, to see something else behind his easy charm — to know that he, too, had a hard sun within him, just as she did, something melting and raw. 

“I don’t wanna go,” she said again. 

He nodded, easing his face into a smile. 

“I mean, who’s gonna eat all these snacks? And…you _did_ buy twenty condoms, and… _someone’s_ gotta use them.” 

He laughed, and the moment passed. He came back to the bed and opened up his sandwich, beaming at her with something like relief. 

They dug into their feast in companionable silence. And there was nothing but carbs in sight. 

**Saturday // 4:40 pm**

“ _I started Early – Took my Dog – // And visited the Sea –_ ”

Erik lay belly down on the bed, Aethelflaed’s paper propped before him. He read the first line of (656) aloud, then looked up at her and smiled. 

“Great first line.” 

“Yea,” Aethelflaed laughed.

_“The Mermaids in the Basement // Came out to look at me –”_

_(“_ Fucking cool”) 

“ _And Frigates – in the Upper Floor_

_Extended Hempen Hands –_

_Presuming Me to be a Mouse –_

_Aground – opon the Sands –_ ”

He was lost now in the rhythm of it, reading to himself more than to her. She watched his eyes flick over the lines, his mouth turn over the words. Then she closed her eyes and just listened. 

“ _But no Man moved Me – till the Tide_

_Went past my simple Shoe –_

_And past my Apron – and my Belt_

_And past my Boddice – too –_

_And made as He would eat me up –_

_As wholly as a Dew_

_Opon a Dandelion's Sleeve –_

_And then – I started – too –_

_And He – He followed – close behind –_

_I felt His Silver Heel_

_Opon my Ancle – Then My Shoes_

_Would overflow with Pearl –_

_Until We met the Solid Town –_

_No One He seemed to know –_

_And bowing – with a Mighty look –_

_At me – The Sea withdrew –_ ”

Erik was silent for a long moment, letting the poem settle, and Aethelflaed did not move to fill the quiet. 

“It’s kinda….sexy,” he said finally, raising his eyebrows. “Don’t you think?”

Aethelflaed laughed in surprise. “I…uh — maybe? I think it sounds kinda scary, to be honest. Getting swallowed up by the sea like that.” 

“Yea, but…isn’t that…kinda the same thing?” 

He looked up, then winced in regret. “I don’t mean like, scary sex with scary people…but, you know…” he looked back down at the paper, fiddling with its edge. “It’s scary…to be, like, really close to someone. To let yourself be close to someone.” He twisted his mouth and shrugged, as if it was just a casual thought. 

Aethelflaed felt very conscious of her body, laid out on the bed, and of the rise and fall of her chest. She shifted like a water droplet, breaking its own surface tension. 

“Yea,” she said. “I get that.”

“But that’s not your analysis? Of the poem?” He gestured to the paper. 

“Well, the paper’s not really about the theme…it’s more about the structure. The form. Like…the stanzas and the syllables and stuff? The rhyming scheme? Which you’d know, if you kept reading the paper…” she teased.

“Right.” He laughed at himself. “Ignore me, sorry. I’m just gonna…” he flipped the page and kept reading. 

Aethelflaed scrolled on her phone for a bit as he read, feeling relieved at the blessed lack of messages in her inbox. She looked up to watch him sometimes, wondering what part he was at, what line he was reading. It wasn’t really _that_ interesting of a paper, she knew. Professor Alfred was a great lecturer, but he had a tendency to give very dry assignments, and “sexy” was about the last word she’d use to describe the overall thesis of the essay. 

After several minutes, Erik turned the last page over and looked at her with a thoughtful expression. 

“It’s interesting,” he said. 

“You’re just saying that.” 

“No, really.” He pushed himself up off his belly and scooched along the bed so that he sat next to her, leaning against the wall. “I liked this…” he flipped through the pages to the conclusion. “Your point here, at the end, about female writers, and creators, and…and leaders for that matter, needing to uphold establishment norms to be recognized…while at the same time, innovating against those norms _because_ of their exclusion from the establishment…I’d never thought about it like that. It makes sense.” 

Aethelflaed stared at him for a long moment, biting her nail. 

“What?” he asked. “Did I say the wrong thing?”

“No. No. You’re just….kind of amazing, you know that?” 

He flushed but looked shyly pleased. “Why? ‘Cause I read your paper?” 

She shrugged. 

Erik’s eyebrows drew together, his face creasing with some emotion she didn’t understand. “Kind of a low bar, don’t you think?” 

“What’s that mean?” She gave half a laugh, but it was colored with shame. 

“I think you know what it means.” 

There was a cold drop, like a fall into a bucket of ice, and then something rearing, a hunted animal defending its last scrap of den. The feeling of it made her push away from him, so their shoulders weren’t touching anymore. 

“So this is the part where you tell me I deserve better,” she said, and the ice was in her mouth now. “And that I just don’t…know my own worth…that I don’t respect myself enough??” She laughed in judgment. “But _you_ know what I deserve, _you_ respect me, you’re a cool, enlightened guy who’s better than all that.” She wielded the shame like a weapon, to keep it from turning on herself. 

“Woah. Jeez, Aethelflaed, I didn’t…” he trailed off, but then his face hardened, and his eyes were almost angry when he looked at her. “No, you know what? I do think you deserve better. You obviously don’t feel safe with this guy, or you wouldn’t be —”

“You don’t know me.” Her words were like steel barbs. “You don’t know my life.” 

“What the fuck is this, then?!” He gestured to the room, to the space between them. His face was twisted with emotion.“What are you doing here? Hiding from your boyfriend? Hiding from your life? I’m not holding you hostage, Aethelflaed. You’re free to leave!” 

A cold pit had settled in her gut. “You want me to leave, then?” 

“Of course I don’t want you to leave!” Erik was still flustered. “As if this hasn’t been the best fucking day of my life, to have you here, to —”

“What??” 

Erik’s voice dropped off, his face suddenly stricken. A flash of painful pleasure cut across her chest. _The best fucking day of my life_. 

“Really?” she asked. 

Erik looked down, trying to control himself, trying to hide his embarrassment, she thought, and just the sight of it was an ache, because she was pleased, she was pleased that he wanted her, if he wanted her, he wouldn’t judge her, not for —

They both jumped as a great pounding sound came from the door. 

“ERIK!” 

It was a man’s voice, low and loud and angry. “Erik, are you in there??? Where THE FUCK are you??” 

Erik turned to her, his eyes wide. He ran a hand over her with a quick, nervous motion, as if making sure she was still there. Then he put a finger to his lips, shaking his head, _shhhh!_

The doorknob rattled, as the man aggressively shook it from the other side. Aethelflaed remembered how Erik had locked the door when he came in, and she felt a little nervous then. 

“DUDE! If you’re in there…I’m gonna FUCKING KILL YOU, dude!”

Erik kept shaking his head, shaping his face as if to say everything was okay, that this was normal, as long as they stayed quiet, it would be okay. She couldn’t hide her concern. 

The pounding started back up. “Dad told me he hasn’t been able to reach you, and dude, you FUCKING IDIOT —- ”

_Dad_? So this was — ? 

“WHERE — THE FUCK — ARE — YOU???” He punctuated each word with a two-fisted punch to the door, and ended the whole rant with a kick. It sounded like something had splintered in the wood. 

Erik and Aethelflaed just sat there, as still and silent as the dead, until the sound of footsteps retreated down the hall and the metallic thud of the outer door told them he was gone. 

Erik was looking down at Aethelflaed’s paper, still in his lap, flicking the edge of it with his thumb and very pointedly saying nothing. 

“What….the fuck…was that?” Aethelflaed whispered, even though he was gone. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

“It’s just my brother —”

“Yea, I figured that part out, believe it or not.”

“He’s just a little intense, it’s fine —“

“You’re hiding from him.” 

And then she laughed, a little louder than necessary. But it was a sound of relief, born from a need to force the weird fear out of the room. It was easier to laugh than face what had just happened. “You’re _fucking hiding_ from him,” and she laughed again, even more manically this time. “You just gave me _so_ much shit, and here you are —”

“I’m not hiding from him,” Erik protested, but his face was easing into a smile, as if he was unable to resist being pulled into her mood. “I’m not —”

“You are!” And she pushed at him a bit, in play, and he pulled her closer in return. 

He was laughing now too. “I’m gonna talk to him later, I am, I’m just —”

“You little _hypocrite_!” 

“Don’t —no — I’m sorry —” 

He kissed her with intensity, almost with force, and she met him in it. It felt good, it felt _so_ good, it felt like all the frustration, and then the fear, all of it had suddenly turned into desire. 

_Make-up sex_ , Aethelflaed thought. But they’d barely even had a fight. 

There was a rustle of paper as her essay fluttered to the floor. And then Erik pressed her down on the bed, so his body was over hers as he kissed her, deeper, and she arched against him. He pulled away, his lips light on her mouth for a moment, his hands still close around her face. 

“I’m not hiding from him,” he said, more somber. “I’m just….doing this right now.” 

Aethelflaed bit at her own smile, raised her eyebrows in triumph. 

“And so are you,” he said, the barest hint of a question in his voice. 

“Glad we’re on the same page.” 

She wanted him to kiss her again, to touch her. She wanted him to touch every part of her. If she could have made herself smaller, so small that she could fit in his hands, so small that he could touch all of her, all at the same time — she would have. She would have done that. 

But Erik was still looking at her, tracing her face with his eyes, hovering out of reach of her lips. 

“I think you’re, uh — kind of amazing too, you know.” He spoke quietly. 

“You’re just —”

“If you say ‘ _you’re just saying that_ ’ —”

“You’re just saying that ‘cause I followed you back to your room and had sex with you!” She forced out the words in a breathless, reckless tumble before he could stop her. It was only half a joke.

Erik looked at her sharply. 

“Well, that’s unfair.” He turned her face gently, put his mouth against her neck. She felt a shiver shimmer on her skin. “‘Cause, obviously, that was incredibly fucking hot.” 

She laughed, but it was more like a gasp. There it was again, his words, turning something inside of her, making her wet and open and needing. He pressed her legs apart and pillowed one around his waist so his hips could fit deeper, locking in with her own. 

“But it’s more than that.” He was still. He wasn’t rocking against her or touching her. The stillness of it was almost painful. “You’re easy to talk to. It’s easy to be with you. To be…to be close to you.” 

She thought of his words, his earlier words, and the poem, and the sea. And she thought of her body, overflowing with pearl, and his body, and she knew he would eat her, he would swallow her whole. And this need would chase her down like an endless wave. 

She surrendered, and was swallowed. 

“Erik.” He was very tight against her, they were tight against each other, and they were rocking like the sea. She realized then that he was swallowed, too. Maybe she was the wave, maybe she was the hungry one. 

“Fuck me, Erik. Please. Fuck me.” 

She didn’t need to ask again. 

**Saturday // 7:30 pm**

“If we’re not hiding, we should do something.” 

“Hmm?”

“If we’re not hiding, we should go out. Go to a party or something.” 

They were on Erik’s bed, eating chips. Aethelflaed had already polished off the second half of her sandwich, and they’d made a good dent in the cookies, too. Erik had opened two beers, given her one. They were only half cold by now, but they were good, and Aethelflaed had already drunk most of hers. It was much better than Natty Ice. 

“But we are hiding,” she said, swallowing. 

Erik snorted. “Okay…so you’re avoiding your dorm mates, I’m avoiding my brother. There’s a party here tonight, in the basement. I doubt any of them will be there.” 

_A Benfleet party_. Aethelflaed had never even heard of Benfleet parties, that’s how far they were outside of her social circle. She doubted Aethelred even knew Benfleet existed. 

“And they’re fun?” She asked, tentatively. “Benfleet parties?” 

“Uh….not always.” 

She laughed. 

“But, maybe we’ll get lucky tonight?” He offered. He looked at her, tucking his lip into his mouth. “And…it would be nice to get out of this room…just for a bit at least. Don’t you think?” 

She swallowed, and it felt thick and dry in her throat. “Yea,” she said. “Yea. That’d be nice.” 

It was just in the basement, she told herself. They weren’t even leaving the building. The bubble would hold that far, and Aethelred wouldn’t be there, no one would be there, no one she knew. She would still be in a different world. 

“We can always come back, if it sucks.”

“Yea, okay, let’s do it,” she said, mustering her enthusiasm and brushing the chip crumbs off her lap onto the floor. 

“Well, it probably won’t really get started for another couple hours.” 

“Oh. Right.” She eased back into place. 

“But…I think I’m gonna take a shower? If that’s cool with you.” 

“Yea. Sorry I used your towel already.” 

He laughed a low sound and looked at her with soft, deep eyes. “I don’t mind.” 

Was he thinking of her, naked on his lap? Wet and open and kneeling between his legs? She took a swig of beer to moisten her mouth. 

“Do you need anything, I dunno, to keep you busy while I’m gone?” He was gathering a set of clean clothes. 

“I don’t think so.” 

He leaned over to his laptop, opening the screen. “You can use this if you want, just… one sec—” He started clicking at it industriously, but Aethelflaed couldn’t see what he was doing. 

“Erasing all your porn history?” 

He laughed in a distracted way. “Not…exactly.” 

He was still working away at whatever it was he needed to hide. She reluctantly picked her phone up off the bedside table. **_Less than 5% battery remaining_** ,the pop up read. She clicked out of it, and her dread deepened at the sight of the Messenger bubble: **7 notifications**. 

**Hild:** _Where are you?_

**H:** _I’m really starting to worry about you._

**H:** _Can you just please tell me where you are???_

**Reddy:** _hild says ur sick, I haven’t seen you in days, what the hell is going on???_

**R:** _what the fuck is going on aethelflaed?_

“It’s been _one_ day,” she said aloud to her phone. “One fucking day.”

“What?” Erik looked up from his own screen, distracted from his work. 

“Nothing, nevermind.”

She looked back at her phone. 

**Thyra:** _Hild texted, she said she’s worried about u_

**T:** _Do u need anything, honey?? Is everything okay?_

“There,” Erik said, turning the screen to her, a blank slate. “For you.” He started a bit at the sight of her face. “Wh — you okay?” 

“Yea, no, it’s fine. It’s all good. Thanks — for the laptop.” And then she pressed the ‘power off’ button on the side of her phone and tossed it onto the couch. 

Erik gave her a smile, then stood up to leave. She felt a small pang, watching him go.She thought of the man, who had been there before - _his brother -_ and she thought of Aethelred, and the text messages, which seemed to chase her even now, through her phone’s dead screen. 

“Will you — will you lock it? The door? When you go?” She asked. 

He turned, looking a little concerned. “From the outside?” 

“Oh…duh,” she laughed, slightly ashamed. “No, I can lock it. From the inside. And then you’ll have to pass my test to come back in.”

He walked back over to her, stood close, and she raised herself up on her knees on the bed so that their faces were level. When he spoke, it was to the side of her head, the side of her neck, as if the words were too intimate to be said in the open air in front of her face. 

“I think it might be….a test enough, to be thinking about you…in here, alone, waiting for me.” And then he brushed his face against hers so that she felt the soft roughness of his beard against her cheek and his breath on her ear. 

When he pulled away he was smiling, and it was more shy than sensual. But his words were like a starting gun, like the crowing of a hound, they pushed inside her and flushed out her own words, like a flock of birds. 

“Maybe you should lock it from the outside,” she said. His eyes narrowed in question, and she leaned in close like he had, muffling her words against his neck. “Maybe I like being your hostage.” 

**Saturday // 9:45 pm**

It was a weird party.

The basement of Benfleet was a low-ceilinged, cavernous thing, a warren of interconnected rooms filled with beer-soaked couches, half-built skateboard ramps, and what looked like old pieces of dorm furniture that someone - or someones - had tried to smash for fun. The walls were sprayed with great slashes of UV paint, and the whole space was lit with blacklight. The result was a little dizzying, as streams of neon color smeared across Aethelflaed’s vision.

It was crowded, she was surprised to see. It was mostly guys, but there were some girls as well, clumped together in small groups as if for protection. It seemed like there might have been a bunch of townies there, and Aethelflaed felt a little dam of relief break inside of her. These were definitely not her people. 

“See anyone you know?” Erik asked as if reading her mind. 

“No,” she said, smiling at him.

They stood in the corner of one den-like room, next to a dilapidated bookshelf covered in graffiti tags - dicks, mostly. They were a fair bit away from the room where the speakers were blasting the music, some playlist that sounded like a mashup of dubstep and metal. They could at least hear each other here, in this tiny oasis of calm. 

“Even if I did know someone,” she said, “I’m not sure they’d be able to recognize me here.”

He nodded, scanning over the crowd. 

She was definitely not in her usual weekend array. She’d had no fresh clothes, no makeup, nothing to dress herself up in the way she was used to for a party. She was left with the same pants from yesterday (underwear abandoned - she’d rather go without it), one of Erik’s smaller t-shirts which still hung halfway down her thighs, and a gray-blue flannel of his. It might’ve almost looked cute in a grunge-chic sort of way (emphasis on the grunge), but she had mostly just resigned herself to not looking cute. It didn’t seem to make a difference to Erik, and she was here for him. 

He was still looking out around the room as if hoping to see someone - or not see someone.

“Is your brother here?” She asked quietly, even though no one could hear them. 

“Uh…no, I don’t think so.” He smiled down at her, leaning against the wall. “I don’t really see anyone I know either, which is weird.” 

She eased closer to him, leaning against his body, remembering before…how he had locked her in the room, from the outside, and the way he had looked at her, when he came back in. She wasn’t sure he understood it. She wasn’t sure she did. 

“Can I kiss you?” He asked, and she looked up in surprise. 

“Here?” 

“You don’t know anyone, do you?” His eyes flicked down to her lips, then back up to her eyes. She saw a spark in his face, the same thing that had twisted in her, that had pushed her to speak a desire she didn’t understand. 

She licked her lips, opened her mouth a little, so that he would know she said yes without having to say it. He kissed her against the wall, and she thought she understood the thrill of it. To be surrounded by others and embedded in each other, to not care what they thought, or to wonder what they thought and do it anyway. He put his hand under her shirt, up and under her bra, tight and soft against her breast. Then he pulled his face away and looked at her. 

Yea, she understood it - the way he looked at her, looking at her while he touched her like that, surrounded by people. He could ask the question now, without any words, just with the shape of his face: _Do you like it?_

“Yea,” she said, aloud, and he smiled and kissed her again, hot and quick on her lips. 

“Hey, dude.” 

They split apart urgently, Erik’s hand retreating in a flash as he pushed himself away from her. There was a guy standing there, looking at them both with sharp amusement. 

“Hey.” Erik raked a hand through his hair, glanced at Aethelflaed. He gave a nervous laugh. 

“What’s up, man?” The guy said. “Haven’t seen you in a while.” 

Aethelflaed thought he looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him. He was shorter and broader than Erik, with a thick beard and dirty blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. 

“Not much.” Erik’s eyes flashed back to Aethelflaed, as if asking whether he should introduce her. She shrugged in assent. “This is Aethelflaed. Aethelflaed, this is Haesten. He lives in the dorm.” 

Haesten dipped his chin up by means of greeting. “Yea, we know each other,” he said. 

“Oh?” Erik looked between them, confused, and Aethelflaed was left scrambling trying to figure where they’d met so she wouldn’t look rude. 

“Hey,” she said, to cover the moment. 

“Anything good?” Erik asked, pointing to the red solo cup in Haesten’s hand. 

“Coke and rum,” he said. “Not bad.” 

“Nice. Maybe I’ll — uhh —- you want me get you one?” Erik asked, turning to her. He was feeling awkward, she could tell. She wished she knew why. Maybe it was just because of the kiss, and getting caught. 

“Sure.” She smiled reassuringly, even though she felt awkward herself, being left with a guy who thought he knew her. 

“I’ll be right back,” he said and vanished into the crowd. 

It _was_ awkward, standing there, nodding to the shitty music while Haesten drank out of his cup and looked at her. 

“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment, unable to stretch the silence any longer. “I don’t actually remember you. I don’t remember where we met. I know that sounds terrible.”

There was a weird quality to the blacklight. She thought it made his teeth glow very slightly so that his smile looked like a grimace. 

“I saw you today,” he said. “On the hall, walking back from the bathroom?”

“Oh.” She nodded, feeling even more uncomfortable. So he had seen her walking half-naked in a towel and she had waved at him, and now he thought they were friends. 

He watched her over the rim of his cup. “Does Erik know you’re a fucking slag?” 

“What?” 

He had asked it with a smile, so she replied with a laugh. But it sounded distant and thin even to herself. 

Haesten spoke again, drawing out each word like a bead on a string. “Does Erik know that you’re a fucking slag?”’

There was a cold space around her, forcing its way inside of her. “Fuck off,” she said and looked at the ground. 

He laughed, took another sip of his drink. “Yea, okay.” 

She wanted to move, to get away from him. She thought it should be easy, to push past him, out into the space. She’d be gone, away, she would find Erik and they would leave. But she didn’t do that, she just stood still, stuck, like one of those women, cursed by the Gods, turning into a tree. 

Haesten was closer to her now. He practically whispered in her ear. Still, she was stuck. “I know you wanted me to fuck you. Walking by like that, like you were the hottest thing around.” 

“Stop. Stop it.” 

“Don’t pretend you didn’t —”

“Hey.”

Haesten pulled away at Erik’s voice. He nodded in greeting, as if they’d just been talking, him and Aethelflaed, whispering close like that. It was a strange reversal of the moment before, when Erik had been close and forced to pull away. 

She swallowed, watching Erik’s eyes move between them, confused and questioning. There were tears clinging to the edge of her eyes and she blinked quickly to try to clear them. Erik’s face was still twisted, and she could imagine what he was thinking, and who could blame him? He knew what she was, he knew what she was doing —

“What the fuck, dude?” He looked at Haesten with disgust. 

Haesten recoiled. “Huh?”

“She’s obviously upset. What the fuck did you say to her?” Erik held two red cups, and they sloshed over a bit as he gestured at Haesten, at her. 

“I didn’t do anything, man. Don’t be a dick.” 

“Fuck off, Haesten. We both know you’re a fucking piece of shit.” 

Haesten laughed without humor, made a little motion with his mouth like he was licking his teeth. He put down his cup on the broken bookshelf. 

“Erik, stop,” Aethelflaed said, reaching out a hand. “It doesn’t —”

He looked up at her, and she saw it again. The hard thing inside of him. It was something loose behind his eyes this time, like a coin rattling in a dryer. He handed her the cups, and she took them, and she didn’t know why she did. Now she couldn’t stop him. 

“I told her she’s a fucking slut,” Haesten was saying. “Which you’d know if you had two brain cells in your head.” And Haesten reached out, as if he was going to touch her, or grab her, or push her, just to prove he could. 

Erik shoved him, a low hard shove, and Haesten stumbled back a few steps, caught off guard and heavy on his feet. 

It was a strange feeling to watch it happen, stranger even then the metamorphosis she’d had under Haesten’s control. She felt weightless, away from herself. She felt like the cups were hovering in front of her, held in place by some magnetic force rather than her own hands. She had the feeling that Erik was going to do something ridiculous, or say something crazy, say something like _she’s mine_ , or _she belongs to me_ , something like a caveman would say, like a barbarian. But even as she thought it, she thought it wasn’t so crazy, was it? Wasn’t it true, wasn’t it, hadn’t she given herself to him, hadn’t she put herself in his power? 

“She’s worth ten of you, you absolute piece of trash.” 

That’s what he actually said. 

Haesten was laughing again in that hateful way, and moving as if to shove Erik back. 

“You know who I am?” Erik’s voice was quiet, and she almost didn’t catch the words. “I know you know who I fucking am. So fuck off.” 

And somehow, Haesten did. He stalled, at least, aborting his shove, as if he just couldn’t be bothered, as if he was suddenly better than it all. He still looked at them, his face still twisted, his mouth still like a wolf’s in the dark light. 

“Does Sigefrid know about her?”

“Get the fuck away from me. Now.” 

Haesten spit - he _spit_ fully onto the concrete floor. But then he turned and was gone, with only a parting glare. 

Time stood stiff. Erik’s body was like a line carved from the dark air, his head even paler in the room’s weird glow. He looked at her, and the loose thing behind his eyes seemed to have settled, returning to its berth. Aethelflaed thought she was still away from herself, the cups still hovering in front of her. But then they started to shake. 

“Um…can you…?” She leaned forward weakly, handed them back to Erik and he took them with a mechanical gesture. And then her hands were shaking very violently, like balloons suddenly free of ballast. 

“Here, fuck — fuck it,” and he just…dropped the cups, letting them splatter against the ground with the crunch of cracked plastic. Aethelflaed felt some splash up the ankle of her pants, but she didn’t care. Erik took her hands within his own. They didn’t stop shaking, but it was still nice to have them held like that. 

“Hey, hey,” he was saying. “You okay?” 

“Um. Um…?” There wasn’t anything else coming to her mind. 

“Hey, I’m sorry, I was acting all crazy and stuff, I know. I just — he’s just…the kind of asshole that only listens to other assholes, you know?” 

He was shaking too, she thought, just inside, where she couldn’t see it. 

“Then — why did you leave me with him?” She was licking her lips, raking her teeth across them, trying to feel them. But they were numb. 

“I thought you knew him?” 

“Oh.” _Right_. “Um…I didn’t. I was just confused.” 

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you.” 

“It’s not your fault,” she said, and her brain felt like a pair of rolling dice. “I’m the one, I’m the one who walked down the hall in a towel cause I thought it’d be sexy to, you know, come in, in the towel, with you —“

“Hey, hey, stop.” Erik pulled her in closer to himself, wrapping his arms around her, and she let him. “It’s okay, it’s not your fault either. It’s not.” 

She thought she might cry against his chest, into the fabric of his T-shirt. She thought that would have felt nice. But she didn’t. She just rubbed her face against him, the skin of her eyelids, back and forth, until she could feel the burn of it. Then she pulled away. 

“I’m okay,” she said. He was looking down at her with unmasked concern. “Stop looking at me like that. I’m okay.” And she rubbed her face again, with her hand this time, and then laughed. “Can we leave now?” 

“Yea.” He smiled, but his eyes were still creased. She looked away from the sight of it. “Yea, let’s get out of here.” 

**Saturday // 11:30 pm**

They lay in Erik’s bed, in the almost-midnight darkness. The only light was the soft red glow of the digital clock, half concealed by the detritus on the bedside table. Erik was behind her, his arms held loosely around her like a big spoon. 

They hadn’t spoken much since the party, since the shit with Haesten. But they had stayed close, touching or almost touching, like two magnets spinning end to end together. They were like animals, she thought, like creatures, speaking only in silence and motion and breath, their bodies heavy with the knowing of each other. 

Aethelflaed wanted to find rest, but the moments of the night kept running through her mind like a rotating reel.

“What was that stuff at the end?” She asked. 

“Huh?” Erik’s voice was half-hewn from sleep.

“That stuff at the end, with…Haesten. You said something, like, _do you know who I am_ , and he asked about….Sigefrid?” 

Erik was quiet for a long time. She could feel him thinking behind her. 

“Sigefrid’s my brother,” he said finally, and Aethelflaed felt no surprise. “He just…um…he just has a reputation, you know? People like to talk about him, tell stories and stuff.” 

“What kind of reputation?”

Erik made a sound that might have been a laugh. “A bad one. It’s fine —” he added quickly. “I mean, you heard him before, he just…has some anger issues.” 

She didn’t speak for a bit, thinking over the moment, when Sigefrid had come to the door. That gave her an animal sense as well, thinking of that moment, and of the moments with Haesten, thinking of Aethelred even. They all made her feel hunted, like there was something out there, trying to claw its way under her skin. The only safe place was here. 

“And that’s what you meant?” She asked. “About, knowing who you are and stuff? That you’re Sigefrid’s brother?” 

“Yea. Yep,” he said. 

“Oh.” 

She realized then, for the first time, that Erik was a whole person, a whole person with a whole life. She was ashamed to realize it. Of course, he was, of course, he existed outside of her, outside of this room. She had _known_ that. But she hadn’t realized it. She hadn’t felt it, till that moment. 

“Were you afraid of me?” Erik spoke very softly. “Did I make you scared, when I — you know — with Haesten?” Maybe he was thinking of his brother, and of the loose thing behind his eyes. Maybe he knew about it, too. 

“No,” she said. “You didn’t. I wasn’t afraid.” 

She thought of the power of it, the power of his anger. It had shocked her, that was true, at the time. She had thought it was his power that was shocking, his power over her, the power she had given him. But…she realized now it was something else. She had made him like that. He had made himself undone because of her, and that was her power…like when she had watched him come undone as she had pleasured him. Just the thought of it moved in her belly like a sharp fall. 

She said, “I think I liked it.”

There was nothing but silence for a long time. 

“Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” She asked. 

“Do you think there’s something wrong with me _?_ ” 

She knew she could have pushed away from him in that moment, with her words if nothing else. She could have said, _I don’t know_ , _I don’t really know you_ , and maybe that would have been the right answer. 

She said, “No. I don’t think so.” 

“Hmm.” 

And her breath released like a bird taking flight. His question was an answer to her own, she knew, and the answer was the same, and if they were wrong then they were wrong together. 

Aethelflaed would think of that moment later. She would think of it as the most intimate moment she had yet known with another person. It was almost painful in its vulnerability. It was as if she had exposed the softest, most fragile part of herself, the raw flesh of underbelly, hidden even to herself, and...against all odds, nothing bad had happened. It was okay. 

She could have cried with the intensity of it. 

But she didn’t. 

Erik was touching her, dragging his hand up and down her arm with a light stroking motion. It was tenderly meant, she knew, but it was like a needle scratching on vinyl. It felt like the taste of chalk. 

“Stop, please,” she said. 

His hand stalled. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay." 

That last moment had been like a resting ground, like an island between two tides. She pushed off from it, into the next one. 

"I just…I don’t want you to be tender. Not…gentle.” 

“What?” He propped his head up as if trying to see her face in the dark. But she liked the darkness. That’s what made it easy to say what she wanted. She could imagine she was speaking to the night itself. 

“I want you to be rough.” She closed her hand over his own, on her arm, tightening it like a vice until she could feel his fingertips, each one driving into her flesh. “Like that.” 

He was still for a while, just holding her arm, as if unsure what to do next. She pressed her backside into him, into the hollow of his groin, telling him what she wanted with her body, pushing him to action. 

“I—-” his voice was full of uncertainty, and she thought for a moment that she had lost him. But then he pushed her, pressing down on her arms so she was face down on the bed.

“Like that?”

“Yea,” she gasped. Floodwater was building behind the edges of her. 

He seemed stiff, a tensed animal half-spooked above her, and she was reminded of the wholeness of him. 

“If you don’t want to—” Her voice was muffled against the pillow. “It’s okay if you don’t want to.” 

“No. I want to.” His voice was very low, soft like the edge of a brush. “If you want me to.” 

She swallowed. Everything was heightened in the darkness. She thought she could feel his words touching her, as solidly as his hands. “Yea.” 

She bucked her hips up, trying to goad him, and he let her press against him.

“No,” she said. “Hold me down. Push me, please.”

One of his hands came to her waist and forced her hips back down onto the bed.

“Yes,” she gasped again. His breath was coming faster now, and his hand slid up, riding under the hem of the long t-shirt she wore. She was naked underneath, so her thighs and butt met the air. The skin of his palm was rough against her. He pushed against her with his hips, and she could feel the point of his erection through his boxers. 

“You want me to fuck you like this?” He asked. 

“Yes.” She squirmed as if to resist, and he pushed her down again. 

He was getting it now, she thought. He brought his hand to her hair, twisting it, pulling her face up to his mouth. He bit the skin of her jaw, and she groaned. 

He reached over her with his other hand, fumbling in the tin of condoms, and she was practically panting, whimpering with the pain of waiting. 

She had been a tool that morning, she thought. She had been carving the world, carving into it, carving into him. But now, it was different. She was turning in on herself, turning over herself, like a plow in a field, peeling herself back like the furrowed Earth. She wanted to give him the softest part of herself. She wanted to lie there and be claimed. 

“Erik?” 

He had let go of her for a moment to open the condom and roll it over himself. His hands came back around her, clamping down almost nervously as if she were about to chastise him. 

“What?” 

She spoke the words into the pillow, into the sheet, into the dark. 

“Will you tell me I’m yours? Tell me…I belong to you.” 

He was quiet and very still. It felt like forever, the absence of words, the breathless waiting, with her own chest as empty as the air. And she thought she had done it, she had gone too far. She had pushed him over the edge - not with her strangeness, but with her closeness, with her open, mawing need. 

But then his hand came back into her hair. He didn’t twist it, or force her down. Maybe he couldn’t help his own tenderness. He brushed his mouth against the side of her face. 

“You’re mine,” he said. He was very close to her. “You belong to me.” 

Then he was pushing himself inside of her, and so were the floodwaters, bursting and breaking and filling her. She knew at that moment that she was the swallower, she was the swallower and the swallowed. She was the wave and the running shore. She was eating herself. 

And she wondered what it felt like to drown. 


	4. ransom // i think i'm coming down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aethelflaed leaves the bubble and learns some important information from a campus low-life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs: Explicit Sex, (yes, that means continued) Cheating, Oral Sex, Sub/Dom Kink, Drug Mentions, Continued ups and downs in Emotional/Mental Health. 
> 
> Also: a brief moment of Ace Erasure from Professor Pyrlig (he’s overdue for sensitivity training, we know this)
> 
> ooOOO also, there is a playlist that absolutely no one asked for! you can find it [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6Y6jJblbReKI69PtbQ5N6n)

“People are a lot more knowable than they think they are.” - Sally Rooney, _Normal People_.

**Sunday // 9:15 am**

She had to come to the surface. 

Aethelflaed knew it, even as her mind shied from the knowing of it.

She started with waking, rising out of the sea of sleep into the day. The sun was up, and the light came in thin strips through the vinyl slats of the blinds, diffusing out into the room so the cream-white plaster gave off a dusty glow. She came awake and had the feeling of something clinging to her, sticking to her skin, the edge of a dream following her out of sleep.

She turned, as if to shake it, and saw Erik awake beside her. His eyes were soft on the sight of her. It made her feel almost naked, exposed, but for the thing still clinging to her like a hungry ghost.

Erik smiled. “Did you sleep okay?”

She smiled in a raw sort of way, like the edge of a cut. The bubble was still intact, she realized. She could still feel it - maybe that’s what was clinging to her skin, maybe that’s what rubbed against her mind with every motion, with every thought, gliding across her body, threatening to pop. 

But she had to move, didn’t she? She had to think. She had no choice. 

“Yea,” she said. “I was just having a…weird dream, I think.”

“What was it about?” 

“Um….” She glanced at his face, feeling self-conscious and slightly confused in the twisting moment of it all. But he looked genuinely interested. She closed her eyes and stretched back into her mind, trying the catch the slippery edge of the dream. “Well I had this…handbag, I think,” she said. “I don’t even really carry handbags in real life, but that’s what it was. But I had left it at the bank…? For like, a while. A week or something.

“And I went back to get it, but I realized I had left…a _snake_ in the bag. Like a pet snake. And I was just feeling just….awful about it, awful for the snake, awful for the bank employees. And I didn’t want to open it, cause I wasn’t sure what I was going to find…like, a totally dead snake in the bottom of the bag, or something really…angry and hungry and mean. And I didn’t know which one I would have preferred.” 

She felt something ease in the telling - the hungry ghost, released. Erik was quiet for a long time, as if thinking. When she opened her eyes, she saw his body, stretched and tense beside her.

“Wow,” he said. “That’s, uh, a crazy dream.” 

She sighed. “Yea. I dunno…I dunno what it means.”

He turned so their heads were close on the pillows. His face was very serious, almost somber, rippled with an expression of deep concern. “Aethelflaed,” he said, and she started to feel concerned herself. “You don’t actually have a pet snake, do you?” 

She laughed. “No. No, I mean, I don’t mind snakes. They’re pretty cool. But no. I don’t have a pet snake.” 

Erik looked incredibly relieved. 

“I take it you don’t like snakes?” She asked. 

“No. God, no.” He was looking as if just the thought made him sick. She couldn’t help laughing again, and he smiled ruefully at himself. “I know — It’s not their fault, I know, but — euurgh.” 

He shuddered. “So there’s this guy on the second floor, Sven. And he brought his snake to the dorm when he came, and it — got — out. _It got out_ of its fucking…case thing, and he was running around asking everybody to look for the snake.” 

His face was animated in the telling. “I thought I was gonna die, seriously. Like, I know it sounds crazy, but I didn’t even sleep, I just stayed up all night watching Netflix in case the snake came in. I plugged the crack of the door with towels and everything.” 

And he finished his story by looking anxiously at the door as if to be certain the snake wasn’t there now. Aethelflaed's cheeks ached a bit from suppressing a smile. 

“That’s…ridiculously cute, Erik.” 

“ _The snake?!_ ” 

“No! No… _you._ Just the thought of you, staying up all night, wrapped in blankets and stuff, in defense against the snake. It’s adorable.” 

This did not seem to ease his mind. His eyes narrowed and his smile came a bit reluctantly. “Like…in a good way? Or, a pathetic way?” 

She felt a little pang up through her chest - a grasping spark, a rising shoot. It wasn’t lust, or rather it was, but of a different sort. There were so many gaps, gaps in knowing the wholeness of him, but this story - of him and the snake - it filled a gap. The tender silliness of it pressed on her heart like an ache. 

“What do you think?” She asked. 

His eyes were wide and shifty. “Pathetic,” he said. “Definitely pathetic.” 

“No.” She laughed into the heel of her hand. “No, not…that.” 

_That_ was pathetic, the way she said that, but she didn’t know how else to say it. It was safer than what she wanted to say. _No_ , _I think you’re sweet, I think you’re lovely, I want to know every silly thing you’ve ever done in your life and everything you’ve ever been afraid of_. 

She definitely could not say that. 

He nodded, eyes still narrowed as if he suspected a joke, but he smiled like he knew the joke was gentle. 

“Erik —” The ache was harder now. It was like a muscle stretching too far, like a bruise touched just beyond bearing. He took her hand and squeezed it gently, and she looked away from his face, staring down at the sheet.

“I have to go,” she said. “I have to…tell my friends I’m okay, and charge my phone, not to mention, you know… _homework._ Also, I _really_ need to brush my teeth.” 

“Yea.” 

She looked up at him sharply.

“I mean, yea, like —- yea, I understand!” He was wincing in regret. “I wasn’t —“

“Well, now I feel self-conscious.” She covered her mouth again with her hand. 

“No! No, it’s fine. I wasn’t saying that —- I’m sorry. Don’t be self-conscious, please.”

She let it drop. He was still holding her other hand with soft pressure. She smiled down at the place where they met. 

“And you’ll let me leave?”

“….why wouldn’t I?” 

She managed to look him in the face, fully in the eyes. It made her heart speed a little, the intensity of it. “I’m your hostage. Aren’t I?” 

Erik’s expression creased, and she felt something weak and runny inside of her, like a broken egg. 

“But…that was just a game,” he said. “Right?” 

“Yea.” The word rushed out like a bolting animal. “No, yea. Just a bad joke. Sorry.” 

He smiled with relief. “Oh.” 

Aethelflaed brushed over the shape of it in her heart, the shape of that thing that wasn’t a joke. It was true, in its own way, but it didn’t belong here. It was inside of her. It wasn’t him. 

“Well.” She shrugged. “I should probably…” and she sat up, making to move away from him, scooting out of the bed. 

Erik sat up, too, squeezing her hand again, stalling her. “Wait. I — um.” He edged a little closer, angling his body over hers, then kissed her once, where her shoulder met her neck. “Do you want to…um…?” He smiled against her skin, and she understood. It was harder to say things like _do you want me to fuck you_ in the bright light of day. 

The ache burrowed deeper into her then. It twisted in her groin, warm fingers of nervous desire, as if he was touching her there, as if he had put his hand inside of her. He was still close, his body almost pressed against her, but not quite. 

“We don’t have to kiss or anything,” he was saying, “not if you don’t want to. If you’re self-conscious, I mean. I haven’t brushed my teeth either.” 

“I’m surprised you have anything left in there,” she joked. 

He laughed, and she felt the in-draw of his breath against her. “I’m not sure I do.” He pulled away and looked at her. “But I…I want…”

It was getting easier to look into his face, to look into his face and speak something shy and needful. She looked into his face now.

“How do you want me?” 

He made a small noise in his throat, and his eyes came into focus, sharpening on her with soft intensity. He seemed very present in front of her as if he was suddenly the realest thing she had ever seen. 

“Take off your shirt,” he said quietly. It was almost a command. “And lay back.” 

She did as he said, drawing the shirt off over her head so that she sat completely naked in front of him. Then she leaned back into the soft nest of pillows, and she waited. 

His touch was feather-light on her thigh, and her legs eased open almost by suggestion rather than force. Then she felt his breath against her, and the touch of his hair —

“What are you doing?” She raised herself up on her elbows, looking down at him with a sudden panic.

She thought he might have laughed at her concern, at her feeling of almost desperate unease, to have his head between her legs like that. But his eyes just narrowed carefully, his face serene and unflustered. 

“I thought I was in charge,” he said. 

“Oh.” Her breath was high in her throat.

“Am I not in charge?” And he slid one finger into her, slow and deep, pressing up with his fingertip so that he touched the most tender part of her. 

“Ah,” she gasped. He stared at her very intensely, and the intensity of his eyes held her own. He liked that, she knew, looking at her while he touched her in some secret place, watching her face as he made her whimper or flush. 

“If I’m not in charge —” 

“No!” His finger was moving inside of her again. “No, you are. You are.” 

“Hmm. Something tells me this might be difficult for you.” 

“What?”

He was pulling away from her, sliding off the bed, and Aethelflaed reeled at the loss of contact. She pushed back up again as if to follow him. 

“Stay,” he commanded. And she remembered how she had commanded him before, how she had filled herself with his undone-ness. Now she watched him move, watched the shape of his body against the air, the drape of his t-shirt across his shoulders, the skin of legs where they emerged from his boxers. There was such an ordinary-ness to it, to him, to his messy half-made-ness. But she was undone by the sight of it. She was the undone one now. 

Erik was rummaging in a bin by the door, something for coats and hats. After a moment, he withdrew a long gray scarf and smiled, and Aethelflaed felt her pulse quicken. There were no bedposts, no headboard…Erik’s bed was just a simple mattress on a simple frame. But he walked over and tied the scarf around the leg of his bedside table, where it bumped up against the bed’s edge. Then he took Aethelflaed’s hands and pressed them back behind her head, twisting the scarf and winding it carefully around her wrists. 

“You’ll tell me to stop, if that’s what you want?” 

Aethelflaed felt his fingertips on her skin and the soft fabric of the scarf tightening around her. 

“Yea,” She was trying to sound relaxed and easy, as if she wasn’t breathless at the feeling of him over her, as if she wasn’t simmering with the intensity of it. “I’ll tell you there’s a snake at the door,” she laughed. 

Erik stalled and looked down at her very seriously. “That snake is gone. They made Sven send it home, after that. Thank _God_. You really think I’d sleep with that crack at the bottom of the door, just — _open_ — like that, if that snake — ” His eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. “You’re just trying to distract me.” 

“No,” she laughed. “No—- I’ll tell you, if I want you to stop.” She swallowed. “But I don’t think I’ll want you to stop.” 

“That’s good.” 

She wasn’t sure what response he meant, and she wasn’t sure it mattered either way.

Erik was climbing back into the bed, and Aethelflaed was open, utterly open and exposed. There was no part of herself she could hide, nothing she could conceal, nothing she could use to conceal herself with, even if she wanted to. That was the torment of it, and the pleasure. 

He touched his fingers to the insides of her legs again, tortuously light. She twisted, trying to get closer to his hands, trying to press them deeper into her skin, but he just laughed and kissed her very softly where her leg met her groin. 

“Erik…” she was pleading, not knowing quite what it was she was begging him for. 

“Yea?” His breath was cool on her skin.

“Mmmm,” was all she could say. 

Then his hand was back on her, back inside of her, touching her very deep, and his mouth was on her too, warm and soft and eager. She cried out at the feeling of it. It was as if he had struck her, that’s how fiercely the feeling rocked through her. But he only worked in gentleness. 

Aethelflaed could feel the side of the bedside table - the gritty edge of the particleboard where it met her fingers. She could feel the press of his hand around her thigh, as if he could draw her even closer to him, as if he wasn’t already as close as it was possible to be. She could feel something building inside of her, hot and sharp-edged, like a small sun. 

“Erik, god, that’s —- _oh my god —!_ ” 

And she arched up against him, against his mouth, even though it was the same as it had been — there was no distance left to broach. They were as close as they could be. And it was pleasure and pain, it was like holding her hand too long near a fire. 

“Erik —!” 

He didn’t stop, and she didn’t tell him to. 

“What about you?” Aethelflaed asked. She was stretched across the bed, her body still naked and open, the blood still moving like warm oil beneath her skin. 

“What about me?” Erik had untied the scarf from her wrists, so now she could press her hands into his chest as he lay beside her, tracing the shape of him through the fabric of his shirt. 

She felt almost drunk, giddy with release. There was less inhibition now, the glow of the last moments still softened the edges of everything. It made her sillier, and less frightened of her silliness. 

“What about you?” She repeated, and she brought her hand down between his legs and touched the half-hardness of him. 

He laughed, but he didn’t take her hand away. “I —I wasn’t totally joking. I might not…come, you know? It’s been a…busy weekend.” 

She smiled against his chest. “So you don’t want to?” She made to move away, but he stopped her motion, holding her hand against him until she could feel him stirring, stiffening beneath it.

“I didn’t say that.” 

“Hmmm.” It was a laugh and a groan, and also the sound of something else being swallowed inside of her, something she could not express, not even here. She spoke what truth she could in its place. “And what if _I_ said…what if I said, that I wanted you inside me? That I needed you…inside of me. Again. Now.” 

Erik did not look at her as he spoke, not this time. She wondered if maybe he was swallowing something, too. “Aethelflaed,” he said, against her hair. “Do you really think I can deny you anything?” 

Erik did come, and quickly too. Aethelflaed was very loose and open from before, and still so wet. He could fuck her very hard and very fast and it was easy, it was easy to let him in like that. 

“You’re so deep,” she said at one point, and he said “yea,” breathless with the effort of it all. 

“Is it okay?” He asked, slowing a bit. “Does it hurt?” 

“No,” she said. “No. I mean, a little, but it’s good. It’s like…a good hurt.” 

“Oh.”

And it was. It was good, and it was as much the goodness of it for him that made it good for her, and she knew he felt the same, and in that it was even better. 

“ _You_ feel so good,” she said, half breath. She said it because she could, she could add a log to the fire of him, she could do that. “You feel so good inside of me, Erik.” 

His hands tightened on her, and he made a noise, a low moaning cry. “I’m…I’m gonna come, Aethelflaed,” he said, and she moaned too, at the words. He pressed his forehead against the side of her face, his hand brushing the edge of her mouth, and then he was still, inside of her, still and so deep. She could feel the pulse of it within her, even through the condom, and she wished for one wild moment that there was nothing at all between them, that even the barrier of their skin was permeable, so they could flow in and out of each other as easily as air through a lung. 

But that was foolishness. She knew that. Erik was pulling away, kissing her neck and her breasts, and she knew she liked the separateness of him. She liked the feel of his body next to hers, outside of hers, big and strange and different. She liked the nakedness of him, the pink flush of his skin where his neck met his chest, the shape of his arm as it stretched behind his head, and the hollow of his armpit, the way it eased into his ribs…

She liked everything about him. 

“I really do have to go,” she said to the pillow. 

“I know.” He was looking up at the ceiling, and she could only see the edge of his face. His expression was a void. 

“Can I….is it okay if I wear the clothes, from last night? I’ll bring them back —”

“Yea.” His smile was bright when he turned to her. “Yea, whatever you want. I mean — I like that flannel, it’s one of my favorites, but it’s good. It’s…all the more reason for you to wear it.” 

It was exactly the kind of thing she wished he would say, and exactly the kind of thing she wished he would not say. 

It didn’t take long to get her things together and stuff them all into her messenger bag, or to get dressed and corral her hair into a lopsided braid. Erik walked her down the hall, wearing sweatpants and his hoodie and his combat boots, loose with the laces untied. He walked her all the way to the outer door, and she wondered if he was worried that Haesten would find her on the way out. 

They hovered for a moment inside the door, half leaned against the cold metal push bar. Erik looked different, out in the open, in the day’s light. It was hard to say why. She thought he looked more like the guy she had met in the copy room, ordinary, unknown, unknowable. He was less like the guy she had spent all weekend with, skin against skin, whose face she’d watched crease and turn with the pleasure of her. They were the same guy, she knew. But they were different, too. 

“I’ll see you around? Soon? Maybe?” He was rubbing the back of his neck with his hand in that nervous way of his. 

“Yea,” she said. “I’ll see you. Soon.” 

They smiled at each other for a moment, and then she hugged him, quickly, softly. She slid her arms inside the fabric of his hoodie, and his hand came up to touch the skin of her neck. 

Then they parted, and she pushed open the big metal bar on the door. Sunlight streamed into the hallway, soaking the carpet with pools of thin, bright light. 

And Aethelflaed left the bubble. 

**_Four Months Ago // Fall Semester_ **

_“So.” Professor Pyrlig looked down at the class. His gaze was almost imperious, but it also held a look of wide-eyed wildness. It made his words feel more chaotic than carefully measured. “Can anyone answer this question?”_

_A pause. A moment of breathless tension in the room._

_“What is that makes people do the craziest things imaginable? The most nonsensical, the most illogical actions? What triggers a human organism to do that?”_

_Another pause as the class mulled over his words. A red-haired girl raised her hand._

_“Um…the need to survive? Fight or flight, that kind of stuff?”_

_Pyrlig looked at her for a moment, raised his eyebrows. “Not exactly illogical, that, is it?”_

_“Oh…” She sank into silence, looking a bit defeated._

_“Anyone else?”_

_“Drugs!” A dark-haired guy called out into the room. “Drugs and alcohol!”_

_There was a nervous laugh. “Not quite what I was getting at, Finan, but we’ll circle back around to that. Anyone else?”_

_A shy-looking boy with a bad haircut raised his hand from the front row and Pyrlig nodded at him._

_“Is it love, Professor?”_

_“For fuck’s sake, Osferth.” Pyrlig winced at his own bad language, then continued. “What is this, a philosophy class? We’re talking about biochemistry here!”_

_Osferth’s cheeks reddened and he looked down at his desk._

_“But you’re not too far off the mark. Most people call it love, of course. But it’s just chemicals in the brain. It’s all just chemicals in the brain.”_

_There was a moment of nervous relief, as the room realized they had gotten on the right track, and then the rustle of paper as students prepared to take down whatever rant Pyrlig was gearing up for. Aethelflaed flipped to a new page in her own notebook and wrote “Love” at the top in a neat scrawl._

_“Dopamine, norepinephrine, oxytocin, vasopressin - don’t even get me started on the sex hormones, testosterone, estrogen. They’re all just chemicals, hormones churning out of your hypothalamus, making you feel happy, warm, excited….addicted.” He gave a meaningful look in Finan’s direction. “It’s not so different from drugs in the end, really. It’s really just a high — love, that is. It’s a chemical craving to be close to another person._

_“Ever wonder why you act like such a lunatic when you’re in love with someone? Why you can’t think of anything else, can’t do anything else? You can overlook all the warning signs, you can override your better judgment, you can act out of character, do things you never thought that you would do, all because_ **_you_ ** _-_ **_want_ ** _-_ **_that_ ** _-_ **_high_ ** _. It feels good, for a bit. But it comes at a cost…the cost of your own mind.”_

_He tapped his temple with one finger and looked down at them all, his eyes still wide and serious. There was a long drawn-out moment of silence._

_“So, despite all the great poems of the ages, and the speeches of philosophers, it boils down to that. Chemicals in the brain. And every single one of you is an addict. Don’t think I don’t know what you do on the weekends.”_

_There was a bit of laughter as the class stirred, looking around at each other, as if all their petty romantic drama had been dragged up into plain view. Aethelflaed felt herself flush a bit at his words, thinking of Aethelred. Was that her? Was she an addict?_

_But the moment passed, and the tension eased a bit. They were just looking at themselves. Nothing had changed._

That’s not me _, Aethelflaed thought._ That’s not me. 

_“Now,” Pyrlig said, his voice rough with energy. “Let’s take a closer look at the hypothalamus.”_

**Sunday // 10:40 am** ****

Aethelflaed knocked on the door to Thyra’s room, leaning against the corner wall of the basement corridor where she lived. The feeling of the cold edge of plaster against her body braced something in Aethelflaed, something weak and drooping, something about to collapse.

There was a rustle of movement in the room, the low murmur of voices, and then Thyra’s face, pale and confused, in the crack of the door. 

“Aethelflaed?” Thyra’s eyes swept over her. Aethelflaed could imagine what she saw: bedraggled hair, ill-fitting clothes, a haggard expression on her face. “Are you okay?” 

“Yea,” Aethelflaed said. “Yea, can I…can I come in for a bit? I’m sorry if I’m bothering you.” 

“No! It’s alright. Come in. Beocca’s here, but it’s okay.” 

Beocca was sitting up in the bed, scrolling on a laptop. He nodded as Aethelflaed entered, giving a taut smile that she decided not to take personally. Both he and Thyra had a Sunday morning sleep-in look about them, but it seemed she hadn’t interrupted anything more intimate than that. _Thank God_. 

“I can’t — I don’t want to go back to my room. Not…yet. I didn’t know where else to go.” 

She sunk wearily down onto the edge of Thyra’s narrow couch. 

“Honey…” Thyra was still a little wide-eyed at the sight of her. “We’ve been trying to reach you, Hild and I. Where have you been? What’s happened?” 

“Nothing, I… I’m fine, I —” Aethelflaed swallowed aggressively, as if her throat was a closing dam and she could keep back the torrent of emotion rising within it. 

_Dopamine, norepinephrine, oxytocin, vasopressin…_ the shape of Professor Pyrlig’s rant from last semester’s Biochem class had been carving itself into her mind the entire walk from Benfleet Hall. _It’s just a high, it’s just a chemical craving to be close to another person._

“I think I’m coming down.” 

“What?” 

She looked up, startled, at Thyra and Beocca, staring at her in utter confusion. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. 

“Did you take something last night, Aethelflaed? A drug?” Beocca was affecting his “concerned R.A.” voice - gentle but commanding. 

“ _No_. No, I…” she looked between them, then rubbed her eyes with the base of her hand. She hadn’t meant to come here, she hadn’t meant to do this, to show up and vomit her mess on their doorstep like some drunk frat boy. But there was little choice in it now. “I’ve been with someone. All weekend.” She spoke in a small voice. “I’ve been with a guy.” 

“Oh.” Thyra and Beocca shared a look, slightly relieved. 

“So you’ve ended things with Aethelred then?” 

Aethelflaed looked down into her lap, blinking back tears. She said nothing. 

“ _Oh_. Oh, hey…” Thyra knelt down next to her, trying to catch her gaze. She spoke with a reassuring lilt to her voice, as if she were soothing a wounded animal. “It’s okay, Aethelflaed. It’s okay. These things happen.” 

Aethelflaed could almost hear Beocca raise his eyebrows. “These things happen?” He asked Thyra. 

“ _Hush_ , Beocca.” 

“What am I gonna do, Thyra? What am I gonna say? I’ve ruined everything — my friends — Aethelred — how will I ever face them?” Aethelflaed’s words became thin, spaced out between deep, gasping breaths. Thyra was rubbing her back now, trying to calm her, but that somehow wrecked her even more. She didn’t deserve tenderness, not after what she’d done, what she’d done to Aethelred — _to_ _Erik —_

The bubble had popped. She had thought — she had hoped — that she might have slid out of it, sneaking between the edges of it, letting the thin film of its surface close behind her like a curtain, never breaking, never ending. 

But it had popped, of course it had popped. And now the world came rushing in, like air into a half-drowned lung, and it hurt. It fucking _hurt_. 

“Did he hurt you? Did he do something to you?” Thyra was asking, almost in a whisper, as if wanting to hold some of the intimacy of the moment out of Beocca’s reach. 

Aethelflaed didn’t understand. “Who? Aethelred?” That seemed to make the most sense, for some reason. 

“No?” Thyra’s face was creased. “This…guy? Who you were with. Who was it?” 

Aethelflaed almost laughed. “Oh, no. I…no, he was…” She felt her cheeks growing hot. “It was very….nice. With him.” Then she blinked again, because the thought of Erik was turning something over inside of her, and it was very naked and tender, like a baby animal learning how to breathe. 

Thyra was smiling. “That’s good.” Her eyes were still edged with concern. 

“Um…I should go…I should leave you two to your morning.” She made to stand up but Thyra’s voice was firm in reply. 

“You stay here as long as you need. Right, Beocca?” 

“Yes.” Beocca nodded and his expression was very genuine in its kindness. Aethelflaed almost couldn’t bear it. 

She rubbed her face with her hand again. “Um…it was Erik? This guy…Erik. He lives in Benfleet Hall. Do you know him?” 

It felt easier, somehow, to have his name out in the air. The soft pain of the secret was lessened a bit in the telling. 

“No,” Thyra said. “I don’t know him. But you like him?” 

“Yea. Yea…I like him,” Aethelflaed said to her lap. She reached into her mind, trying to change the subject away from her own feelings. “He has a brother — an older brother. Sigefrid?” 

Thyra’s smile vanished in a breath. She shared another look with Beocca, but it was very different from what had passed between them before. 

“You’ve been…with… _Sigefrid’s_ brother? All weekend?” 

“Yea?” The word was watery in her throat. The embarrassment, the self-loathing, it waned a bit as a different emotion came into her chest - concern, confusion, fear. “What —?” 

“Nothing,” Thyra assured quickly. But Aethelflaed did not miss the warning glare that she threw at Beocca. “Nothing. Sigefrid’s in our year is all. He has…a bit of a reputation.” 

“I’ve heard.” Aethelflaed swallowed. “What is it? What’s he done?” 

“Nothing,” Thyra said again. “I mean, nothing in a while. He got in trouble — in our first year, when we were freshmen. He beat up a kid real bad, it was a bit of a mess.” 

“A _bit_ of a mess?” Beocca’s face was twisted. “The guy was in the hospital for two weeks.” 

“Holy shit.” Aethelflaed let out a ragged breath. It was worse than she’d expected. 

“Most people thought he should have been expelled,” Thyra said quietly. 

“Most people thought he should have been _arrested_ ,” Beocca countered. 

“But he wasn’t?” 

“No. He went home for a bit — suspension, or something. Forced leave of absence. But he came back eventually.” 

“We all thought his parents must be some big-shot alums, donated a new science building or something.” 

Aethelflaed shook her head, thinking of Erik’s fancy flat-screen TV. “No…his dad’s not an alum. He’s rich, but… I don’t know. It doesn’t really make sense, does it?” 

Thyra was trying to be reassuring again, brushing through the moment like it was an unwelcome visitor. “It doesn’t really matter, I’m sure.” Perhaps she thought Aethelflaed one crack away from a full meltdown. “So Sigefrid’s a little scary, but…people can’t help their family, can they?”

“No…”

“And Erik’s not scary, is he?” 

“No, he’s…” She didn’t know what to say. _He’s wonderful, he’s kind, he’s gentle._ She could have said that. _He has something hard in him, too, but not like that, not like Sigefrid, he’s hard like I’m hard, inside, and it doesn’t scare me, that’s not what scares me, he gave me everything I wanted, everything, and what I did I do? I took it, and took it, and took it, as if it were mine to take, and now what? Now what can I give him? The mess of my life? The mess of myself? What if he doesn’t want it, what if he doesn’t want me, what if I’m just nothing, what if I’m just —_

“He’s not scary.” 

That’s what she said. 

**Sunday // 11:15 am** ****

There were benefits to living on the basement floor in an upper-class dorm near the edge of campus. The whole of Thyra’s hall was somewhat careworn - cinder blocks painted one too many times, cracks in the glass of the windows, a slight smell of mold in the air. But at the end of her hall was an old janitor closet with a _bathtub_. An honest-to-goodness working bathtub. And Thyra was the only one who ever used it. 

So now Aethelflaed sat in the bath, hot water soaking into her skin, into her bones, making her eyes bleary and fingertips soggy with its warm, heavy weight. She turned the tap on intermittently, topping off the heat in the tub, and draining the bottom inches of cold water when it got too full. 

It was like a little bubble in there, a tiny bubble just around herself, and she could dip her head under the water and let the world retreat into the sounds of wet echoes and her own pulsing heart. It was almost safe, there. 

Aethelflaed heard a knock at the door and emerged from below the surface, letting the water stream down her face like tears. 

“Aethelflaed?” The voice was muffled through the door. “Aethelflaed, it’s me, Hild. Can I come in?” 

“Yea,” she said, and her voice was wet and echoey like the sound of the bath. 

Hild came in. She wore a thick green sweater, faded jeans, heavy-bottomed duck boots. She took off a puffy down vest she’d been wearing as soon as the damp heat of the room hit her. She was so _normal_ , so…practical, so assuredly herself. The sight of her eased Aethelflaed. 

“Glad to see you’re alive,” Hild said, one eyebrow raised. 

“Yea.” Aethelflaed winced. “Yea, sorry, I….I should have got in touch with you, my phone died and I…” It was almost the truth. Aethelflaed let out a sigh. 

She might have been self-conscious with another friend, naked in the bath. But it was safe with Hild. It was always safe with Hild. 

“I brought you some fresh clothes.” Hild slung off her backpack and unzipped it. “Thyra said you might need some.” 

“Thank you. 

Aethelflaed looked down into the water, swung her hand across it, parting its surface into waves and ripples. Hild sat down on an overturned bucket and allowed Aethelflaed her silence. 

“Did…did Aethelred come to the room?” 

Hild nodded. “Yes. And I told him you were vomiting…and I…” she pitched her voice low, and there was a note of mischief to her face that surprised Aethelflaed. “Well, I actually had a video queued up on my laptop, of someone puking into a bucket. And I played it before I answered the door, so he could hear it in the background. I think it worked perfectly.” 

And she eased back, looking very satisfied with herself. 

“Hild!” Aethelflaed laughed in delight. “That’s amazing, Hild, you’re —” but to her horror, her voice starting getting very high and thin, squeaking like a wheel, and then she was choking back a gasp. 

“Aethelflaed?” 

There was nothing to be done for it. Aethelflaed put her face in her hands and wept. The force of it took over her body, so she was shaking and shuddering with the effort, unable to quell herself, unable to ease the storm of her own grief. She couldn’t even say what it was, what had triggered it, or why it felt so good to release it like this. It simply was. 

Hild did not rush over to calm her or touch her or ask her what was wrong, and Aethelflaed was grateful for that. She just said, “it’s okay, it’s alright” over and over again in a quiet voice, almost too low to hear. 

“I just feel like —” Aethelflaed gasped out the words. “Like a — a butterfly — or a moth or something? You know how when they get all in their little house — whatever it’s called…and they change? Like, into something else? You know — it’s like — they _melt,_ they break down into, like _goo_ or something. They just completely — _liquefy_ — before they can be all, like, pretty and have wings and stuff? Did you know that? Did you know—?” Aethelflaed looked up at Hild, her eyes narrowed by the swell of her wet cheeks.

“Yes,” Hild said gently. “I did know that. I mean, it’s a _little_ more complicated than that —” she cut her words off, smiling, but Aethelflaed thought it was at herself. “But that doesn’t matter. I know what you mean.” 

“I feel like that, Hild. I feel like I’m goo.” Aethelflaed sniffed. “And I don’t know how — I don’t know how…to put myself back together.” 

Hild just looked at her for a long moment, and Aethelflaed thought she could see the slow turn of Hild’s mind behind her eyes. It wasn’t slow like _stupid_ , it was slow like _thoughtful_ , like _careful_ and _gentle_. That slowness let Hild see something in her that she couldn’t even speak out loud, that she couldn’t express, not even to herself. 

“You’re allowed to be messy, Aethelflaed,” she said. “You’re allowed to not know.”

Aethelflaed sunk back into the water, sighing and splashing the tears off her face. The breath was coming more slowly and evenly into her chest. She looked at Hild almost ruefully, but she wasn’t embarrassed.

“It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

**Sunday // 12:10 pm**

Thyra moved intentionally across the dining hall, weaving through tables towards the back corner, while Beocca and Aethelflaed trailed behind, dragged inexorably in her wake. 

“You’re coming to eat with us, _”_ Thyra had said when Aethelflaed came out of the bath. “You need food.” 

Aethelflaed had not protested. She would take any excuse to avoid returning to Winchester Hall just yet.

Hild had peeled away. She was due downtown for a shift cooking at the local shelter, and she had eaten already, probably at 8:30 am with the two other people on campus who were awake that early on a Sunday. 

Now Aethelflaed wore the clothes Hild had brought for her - an old band tee-shirt faded to cloud-softness, a thick blue cardigan, unbuttoned in the front, stretchy black pants lined with fleece. She felt more normal, more herself, and the weird feeling of unreality started to fade as she heaped servings of pancakes and scrambled eggs onto her tray. 

Three hours ago, Erik had felt like the realest thing in the world, like the real world itself was happening in his room and nowhere else. But in the dining hall now, surrounded by hungover students, Aethelflaed could imagine it had never even happened at all. Like maybe she would see Erik, and they would smile and nod at each other like the distant acquaintances they were, and then go on, as if there was nothing else between them. 

But she didn’t see Erik. 

She didn’t see Aethelred either, which was a relief. He was probably still sleeping off his binge from the night before. But Aethelflaed couldn’t help looking around herself, around the room as she walked, sharp-eyed and cautious, like a hunted animal assessing danger. 

They had made it to the far end of the hall now, where a sandy-haired guy sat alone in an alcove, eating waffles and bacon. 

“Thyra.” He smiled in greeting, a sharp-edged, self-satisfied smile, as if he had just told a very clever joke that no one else had understood. 

“Aethelwold,” Thyra said in her casual, level way. “Can we sit here?” 

“I didn’t realize you wanted to eat next to a puddle of shit,” Beocca said, very much loud enough for Aethelwold to hear. 

Aethelwold’s smile did not wane. He just turned to Beocca, blinked a few times, then looked back at Thyra. “Well…I’d say you’re welcome here, but the rugby team should be joining me any moment.” 

Thyra didn’t even pause. “The rugby team is not coming to join you.”

Aethelwold shrugged, continuing to smile at himself in that disconcerting way. “Well, they should, you know. They always act like we’re the best of friends when they want my help doing terrible things to their brains.” 

Thyra was already pulling out a chair and sitting down, and Beocca and Aethelflaed reluctantly followed her lead. 

“To what do I owe this pleasure, Thyra? And…Thyra’s…angry bald man? And…you I do not know.” Aethelwold turned to gaze at Aethelflaed, but Thyra did not introduce her and Aethelflaed kept silent. She still wasn’t sure who this guy was or why they were sitting with him. 

“Would you also like my help doing terrible things to your brains?” 

Beocca glowered as if on reflex. “Like we’d ever want to buy whatever poison you’re peddling.” 

“Beocca,” Thyra said, with a note of tested patience, and Beocca settled back into sour silence. She turned back to Aethelwold. “Do I need a reason to catch up with my freshman year lab partner?” 

“Thyra.” Aethelwold’s mouth flattened. “You once let a dog bite me, because - I quote — ‘ _he needed to get out his aggression._ ’”

“He was traumatized! You were taunting him.” 

“The point is, I don’t think you’re here out of love for me.” 

Aethelflaed cast a glance behind Thyra’s back towards Beocca, with a look that she hoped expressed a clear “ _what the fuck is going on_?’ But Beocca just shook his head, equally confused. 

Thyra caught Aethelflaed’s eye and she gave a small, almost questioning smile that set Aethelflaed’s belly twisting on itself. Then she looked back to Aethelwold. “I have some questions. About Sigefrid,” she said simply. 

The twisting intensified. 

“Oh. Oh ho ho ho!” Aethelwold’s grin split his face again, like the cut of a razor. “Thyra, you saucy minx! I didn’t think Sigefrid was your type. And with your boyfriend sitting _right there,_ ” he added, in a dramatic stage whisper. “Tsk, tsk.” 

Beocca looked like he was about to erupt with an enraged splutter, but Thyra merely placed a calm hand on his arm. 

“I’m not asking for myself, Aethelwold.” 

Aethelwold’s eyes narrowed, then flitted quickly towards Aethelflaed. “Oh.” He raised his eyebrows, and Aethelflaed felt a flare of heat stretch up her throat under his gaze. “ _Oh_. Very interesting. Didn’t think _you’d_ be _Sigefrid’s_ type, if I’m being honest.” 

It seemed Beocca could not contain himself any longer. “Aethelflaed’s not interested in Sigefrid, for christ’s sake.” 

“You seem to know a lot about Sigefrid,” Thyra said, calmly controlled as always. 

“We’ve done…business together, on occasion.” 

“What kind of business?” Beocca growled. 

“Oh, I’m _sure_ you can imagine, bald man.” He turned back to Thyra. “Naturally, such information is confidential. You understand.” And he gave his wry little smile. “But….you _have_ piqued my interest. If you tell me _why_ you want to know about Sigefrid, perhaps I’ll tell you _what_ you want to know.” 

There was a long moment of silence as they all looked at each other around the table. Thyra’s eyes were on Aethelflaed again, questioning, tentative, and there was a tremor of panic flushing through her throat - _Why are we here?_ She wanted to say. _Why are we doing this? What if I don’t want to know?_ But then she thought of Erik - of Erik as he was, truly, not an acquaintance but something else, something real. Someone _whole_. And something hard and tender released itself inside of her. 

“Sigefrid,” she said, her voice a bit hoarse. “He has a brother…a younger brother.” 

Aethelwold’s eyes widened and he gave a low chuckle. “Ooooooooooh. Now. That makes more sense. The baby Thurgilson, of course. Nice guy, I’ve heard.” 

Aethelflaed just nodded and swallowed. 

“Sooo…what do you want to know? Dirt on his mean big brother?” 

The questions came quickly, now that she’d allowed them into her mind. They rushed from her throat like a plume of smoke. “Why wasn’t Sigefrid arrested? After beating up that kid? Why wasn’t he expelled?” 

Aethelwold’s grin slid off his face and his eyes sank into themselves a bit. “Yea.” He laughed without humor. “Yea, right. That’s not — uh — let’s just say, learning about your little boy drama isn’t really worth that much, Aethel…flaed…or whatever your name is.” 

“Tell her what she wants to know!” Beocca commanded, his face dark. 

“Yea…I’m not afraid of you, baldie, and there is literally _nothing_ in it for me —”

“Tell her what she wants to know, and I’ll look the other way when you come to Coccham Hall to sell your crap.” 

Aethelwold seemed interested. Coccham Hall was the freshmen dorm where Beocca served as R.A.

“I know you’re selling there,” Beocca continued. “I just haven’t caught you yet. And I won’t - for the rest of the year - as long as you answer the damn question.” 

Aethelwold had put his smugness back on like a well-fitted mask, but there was still something wan and hunted squeezing out the sides. Aethelflaed thought her face might have looked the same. She wanted to be calm and controlled like Thyra was, but underneath the surface, she was roiling. 

“Tell her what she wants to know,” Thyra was saying. “And I _won’t_ tell the rugby team that half of what you give them is just Sudafed.” 

Aethelwold withered. He looked up at Thyra almost pleadingly. “They deserve Sudafed, Thyra. You know this.” 

“They _are_ rather big though, aren’t they?” 

Aethelwold’s mouth twisted in a defeated sort of way. “Fine. Fine, but listen, this is _cursed knowledge_. Do with it what you will, but if I _ever_ find out you told that I told—”

“You’ll what? Kill us?” Beocca snorted. 

Aethelwold glared at him. “Maybe…maybe.” 

Thyra nodded, long and slow, as if signaling to a child. “Tell us.” 

Aethelwold gave a great, rushing sigh. He glanced around as if checking to make sure they weren’t overhead, and when he looked back at them, his eyes were sharp. “Well, from what I’ve heard…Sigefrid’s dad…he arranged it. Paid off the college or something. Hushed the whole thing up.” 

“Why would they let him do that?” 

“Well…. he’s a boss.” 

“A boss?” Aethelflaed cut in, her voice a bit thin and shaky. 

Aethelwold’s contempt simmered over her. “Oh, you _are_ a lamb, aren’t you? A boss. Like a _crime_ boss. A gangster? You have heard of those, haven’t you? ” 

Aethelwold’s words came as if through a long narrow tunnel. She gathered her own as best she could and sent them back. “What kind of crime?” 

“Oh, the usual, I’d imagine. Drugs, racketeering, local politics. I’ve heard he has half the city police department in his pocket.”

“You’re just telling tales.” Thrya’s voice was unexpectedly harsh. “You’re just making this up.” 

“I — am — _not_. I am not. Trust me, buying drugs from Sigefrid, it becomes _quite clear_ what you’re dealing with.” 

“So, what —?” Aethelflaed’s voice was slightly hysterical to her own ear, high-pitched and desperate. She swallowed, trying to control it, but that seemed to feed the fluster even more. “The college just…did what he wanted? They just turn a blind eye to him? To his k-kids —-” and she lost her voice then, because she couldn't avoid the thought of Erik’s face - kind and gentle, with a hard, haunted thing that lived behind his eyes.

“Well, that’s the funny thing, isn’t it?” Aethelwold’s expression had returned to something like self-satisfied amusement. “The _venerable_ Wessex College, acclaimed across the country for its strong institutions, its unparalleled scholarship…” He was puffing up his voice in mockery, his mood apparently lifted by the performance of it all. “Good old Wessex, and the chancellor, and the deans, and the board…” He shrugged and paused, and Aethelflaed could not help but think he did it for the effect. “They’re all afraid of the mob.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for this excruciating amount of build-up towards a *very* predictable revelation. 
> 
> me: Erik and Sigefrid's dad is a mob boss!!!!  
> everyone (in a monotone): oh, wow. 
> 
> listen, there's not a huge amount of options to make this work, and really, the Vikings were essentially just mobsters so..... still though, framing the narrative so that this was a "reveal" might have not been the most successful way to approach it from a story-telling perspective. I DON'T KNOW. I've written all my other Aethelrik stuff from alternating points of view, so it was kind of fun to just stick with Aethelflaed through this one. But given the nature of fan-fiction....there's not too much to hide from the reader, just from the characters :P 
> 
> Always open to feedback/concrit on this, and anything else! 
> 
> One more chapter to go. Just a reminder that this is not a fix-it. I'm sorry. (it hurts me too).


	5. release // with a mighty look at me, the sea withdrew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik and Aethelflaed have two conversations, nine weeks apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to kind of apologize / disclaim / spout incoherently one more time about how emotionally chaotic Aethelflaed is in this story, and how OOC I know that is. I’ve never really written her this way, and I know it’s not totally true to character. It wasn’t exactly the intention to write her fully in-character going into this, honestly. And still, it’s been kind of fun to lean into this idea that she’s trying really hard to be controlled on the outside but is actually hella emotionally chaotic on the inside, which, if not purely in-character, I think is at least an interesting interpretation of her experience in Season 2. Also, yea, falling in love with your captor is about as emotionally chaotic as it gets, so maybe I’m actually gonna stand by this and by “stand by this” I mean stand vaguely close to it but still far enough away that I can pretend I’m not standing close to it if I have to. 
> 
> In other news, Aethelflaed continues to be emotionally chaotic this chapter, perhaps to unprecedented levels. The end. 
> 
> Other CWs: Some sexual language, Emotional Abuse, Family Abuse, Physical Abuse, Trauma.

“Most people go through their whole lives, without ever really feeling that close with anyone.” - Sally Rooney, _Normal People_

**Sunday // 7:45 pm** ****

The afternoon passed with a strange pace. Aethelflaed tried to be normal, to act like everything was normal. She hid in her room, the reading for Odda’s class propped in her lap. She let her eyes drift across the words, over and over and over again, until the first sentence of the chapter was burned into her mind: “ _The lines a society holds between criminality and legality are formed at several different levels of government and policy, often illuminating contrasts and disparities between the will of the state and the mandate of the people_.” But she didn’t get any further than that. 

She texted Aethelred: “ _still feeling like shit, sorry, see you tomorrow I hope?”_ and then threw her phone into the bottom of her bag and did not wait for a response. She spent several fevered minutes with her laptop open to a Google search, her hands hovering over the keys as if not sure what they wanted to type. Eventually, she opened an Incognito window, on impulse more than anything, and wrote out “being a kid in a mob family” very quickly before pressing enter. 

Her heart had sped as the search results loaded, her hands almost buzzing and numb with nervousness, but then she scrolled through several pages of Guardian articles and Ask Reddit forums, and her body started to ease a bit. It was all mostly historical stuff, focusing on the Italian mafia, and she was almost grateful that none of it seemed to apply to Erik’s situation. Erik wasn’t Italian, she knew, and he lived right now, in 2017. Maybe it was a different kind of thing, she told herself, maybe it wasn’t a big deal. He and Sigefried went to college, didn’t they? They had a normal life. Erik was just a normal guy. Maybe it didn’t matter. 

And then she’d closed the computer, and she hadn't looked again. 

Hild came back around dinner, bringing Aethelflaed a container of soup from the shelter so she wouldn’t have to go to the dining hall. It was harder to pretend that things were normal around Hild, harder even than around herself, and soon the story had come rushing out - all of it. Erik and the time they’d spent together, the moment with Sigefrid and what Aethelwold had told her, even the stuff with Haesten, which she’d thought she wouldn’t tell to anyone if she could help it. Hild took it all in with steady aplomb, nodding occasionally, or asking calming questions when Aethelflaed’s voice started to rise and ripple with emotion. 

“And I thought, you know, maybe it doesn’t matter,” Aethelflaed was saying now, finally getting to the part with the google search and the void of information it had brought to her. “Maybe it’s not actually a big deal, you know?” 

Hild nodded, gazing thoughtfully at the Fiona Apple poster on the wall above her bed. “Maybe,” she agreed.

“I don’t think it matters,” Aethelflaed said again. 

Telling the whole story had put her in a strange set of mind. It had taken her back into the moments with Erik — (well, not _all_ the way into them, not with Hild) — but still, they had resurfaced in her body, filling her up to the brim with the sharp sweetness of need, the ache for closeness. It was like the flush of drink inside of her, and it was easy to let everything retreat in the wake of that feeling. _Chemicals in the brain_ , she might have told herself. But she wasn’t thinking about that. She was thinking about Erik and feeling wet at the thought. 

“You mean it doesn’t matter to you,” Hild was saying.

“Hmm?” Aethelflaed crossed her legs under the covers, trying to ignore the ache. “Yea. I guess that’s what I mean.”

“So…do you know what you’re going to do?”

The ache did retreat a bit then, and Aethelflaed fell quiet for a while, thinking. “Well….I think I have to tell Aethelred the truth. He deserves that.”

“Yea. I think so too.” 

Aethelflaed thought of Aethelred and imagined speaking the words to his face - _I slept with someone else, I don’t wanna be with you anymore._ The thought was very heavy in her stomach, like a punch of fear. It drove the ache away for good. 

“Hild. Hild — what if I’m wrong?”

“About…Erik’s family not being a big deal?” 

“No, about — about….” She felt a little shame at the unspoken thought inside of her, but she let it loose anyway. “Hild, what if I mess up my whole life, and…he doesn’t even want me?” 

Hild was quiet. Aethelflaed could hear only the sound of her racing thoughts. 

“Maybe I should talk to him - to Erik - before I make any rash decisions, and make sure, make sure —”

“Does it matter?” 

“What?”

“Does it matter? Whether Erik wants you or not?”

It was clear that Hild was trying to sound gentle and non-judgemental, but Aethelflaed couldn’t help but feel like she was being put the test, and that she was at risk of failing. 

“…of course it matters,” she said, carefully. 

“I mean, if he didn’t want you, you’d just go back to Aethelred? Like it hadn’t happened? Could you do that? Could you really go back now?” 

And she thought of Aethelred again, of pretending that she still wanted him, pretending that she wanted to please him, that she wanted to have sex with him, and the panic of that was even greater than the panic she’d felt before, when she’d thought about telling the truth. 

“No,” she said finally. “I can’t go back.” 

And it was decided. 

**Monday // 1:30 pm** ****

It was easy to decide. Or rather, it was easier to decide than it was to wait, biding the time through the night and into the morning, trying to turn her mind away from the thought of what was coming. It was hard to sneak out of the dorm and breeze through the dining hall as quickly as possible. It was harder even to sit through Alfred’s lecture, even though it was fascinating. Aethelflaed missed most of it, as her mind just turned and churned over countless imagined scenarios with Aethelred - what she would say, what he would say, what she would then say in response to what he had hypothetically said. At one point, Gisela looked over at her sharply, a question on her face, and Aethelflaed realized that the little rant she was rehearsing in her head had spilled onto her lips, and that she was murmuring to herself loud enough for Gisela to hear. 

She stayed very quiet after that, and let the nervousness simmer silently in her hands and her throat instead.

When class was released, she had no appetite for lunch. She instead went straight back to her room and lay face down on her bed for a long time, taking deep breaths until her body calmed as much as it was likely to do. 

And then she got up and walked to Aethelred’s room. 

Aldhelm answered the door. 

“Oh, hey, Aethelflaed.” He looked a bit surprised at the sight of her, but in a relaxed sort of way. His demeanor eased her a bit, offering a small reprieve, a forbearance on the hard moment she knew was coming. But then the moment started to feel even more intense in the stretching. 

“Is Aethelred here?” 

“Yea,” he said, and her stomach dropped another notch towards her feet. “Aethelred!” Aldhelm called, and there was a rustle of movement from the far corner, then Aethelred’s face appeared. Aldhelm stood there for a moment too long before nodding awkwardly and vanishing. 

Aethelred looked her up and down. She hadn’t really noticed before how invasive his gaze was, how harshly his eyes fell on her. She had once thought that look was lust, or desire, or affection. But it didn’t feel like that anymore. 

“Nice to see you’re feeling better,” he said, with an edge of sarcasm.

“I am,” she said. And she remembered Hild’s ruse, and she took a little heart at the thought of it, and at the thought of her lovely, protective friend. She smiled to herself. 

“What?” Aethelred asked, apparently taken aback. 

“Nothing, I’m just….feeling a lot better,” she said. “It’s a relief, is all.” And she smiled again, feeling a flush of power, knowing she could throw him off a little more. 

It all felt suddenly easier than she’d thought it would be. The sight of him standing before her was almost surreal. It was almost like he had stopped existing for her - for the entire weekend, he had simply vanished from her life. But now he was here again, reborn, and worse for it in her own mind. Her nervousness faded away like a retreating tide at the reality of him, the truth of Aethelred, as she saw it now. There was nothing to be nervous about, she realized. She had nothing of value to lose. 

“I was hoping we could talk,” she said. 

“We….are talking.” Aethelred gave a little sneer to punctuate his joke. 

“Oh, yea.” She nodded. “I was thinking maybe more like… no, actually? This is fine.” She looked around the hall. They were alone. 

His eyes were still doing their shifty thing, his face arranged as if to suggest that she was somehow ridiculous for having anything unexpected to say. Had it always been like this with him? It couldn’t have been, could it? 

She took a breath. “I want to break up with you, Aethelred.” 

“What?” He laughed a bit, and it was the most honest laugh she’d seen from him in a while. It was almost endearing, his genuine surprise at the whole thing. Almost. 

“I don’t wanna be with you anymore,” she stated the words slowly and clearly, as if she was giving a presentation in front of a class. In truth, it was recited from memory. “I don’t wanna hang out with you anymore….I _definitely_ don’t want to have sex with you anymore…to be honest, I don’t know if I even really want you to talk to me, like, ever again.” She wasn’t trying to be cruel. She was just trying to be honest, to be honest and clear with her words. That was what mattered, right?

The humor was gone from Aethelred’s face. He recoiled a bit. “What the _fuck,_ Aethelflaed? What, did you just decide to wake up this morning and be a _fucking bitch_?” 

“No,” she said, and she felt a little pity for him, against all odds. “No. I slept with someone else, Aethelred.” 

He was back to smiling again, but it wasn’t genuine. It was very sharp and his eyes were hard points. “I don’t know if you’re trying to be _funny_ right now, Aethelflaed, but —”

“No.” She shook her head with a slow, serious gesture. “No, I’m trying to be _honest_ , Aethelred. I lied to you. I wasn’t sick at all, actually. I was with a guy, all weekend. I was… _having sex_ with another guy… _all_ weekend — ”

Aethelred turned with a jerky motion and closed the door behind him, pressing them further out in the hall, as if trying to hide the encounter from Aldhelm and the others in the room. 

“I think I must be misunderstanding you, Aethelflaed.”

A pulse of anger surged up through her. It _had_ always been like this, hadn’t it? Always feeling like everything she said was somehow wrong, somehow a mistake. But this was _the truth_ — this was _her life —_

“I don’t know how to be any clearer with you, Aethelred,” she said harshly. He blinked a bit. “I fucked someone else! And I would the exact same thing again if I could! So, um…I _definitely_ think that we should break up, don’t you?!” 

Aethelred’s lips were very thin and pale as he glared at her. “You’re so ungrateful, you know that?” He was almost whispering, but that somehow only made the words sharper. “We all felt sorry for you, everyone in the group, you know that? I fucked you out of _pity_ , Aethelflaed. I dated you out of _pity_ and now you’re gonna do this to me? You would be _nothing_ without me. _Nothing.”_

Aethelflaed laughed.“Okay. Sure.” She was feeling something else now, something not too different from a high, like her body was surrounded by thick air. It was like a buffer between him and her. His words couldn’t touch her through them, nor could the shame he wanted to force onto her so badly. It was his own shame, she knew. It didn’t belong to her. 

“You know that I’m gonna tell _everyone_ exactly what you are,” he was saying. “You will never live this — ”

“Good,” she said, with equal and opposite force. “You do that. Then I won’t feel bad telling everyone exactly what _you_ are.” 

Aethelred shook his head in disgust, apparently speechless at her inability to roll over and let him kick her. 

“I’m done here, Aethelred,” she said. “See you around. Or maybe not.” 

He gave her one last sour look and then spun back into his room, slamming the door in her face. She let him have his door slam. She even let him have his self-righteous anger about it all. It didn’t upset her. It didn’t matter. 

It was done. 

**Wednesday // 3:00 pm** ****

Aethelflaed waited two days. It was hard to explain to herself exactly why. She couldn’t simply text Erik - she didn’t have his number. She briefly considered emailing him - ** _ethurgilson@wessex.edu_** would have certainly worked, right? But she threw that idea out almost immediately after thinking of it. School email was what you used to ask a classmate for notes or to email the professor pretending you were sick. It was certainly not what you used to express the complexity of _I really like you, I want to be with you, I’m terrified you might not like me as much as I like you, but I broke up with my boyfriend, and I hope that’s not weird, and I hope none of this is weird, and anyway, I’d love to see you again, but not in a high-pressure way, but I just wanna know, is that what you want, too?_

Just the thought of drafting that email had set Aethelflaed on a bit of spiral, and she’d lost half a day on Tuesday reconsidering the plan entirely. Maybe it was better to let him reach out to her. She didn’t want to look desperate. She had sat on that notion for a while, only to realize that Erik would never come to her dorm. As far as he knew, she was still in a relationship with a guy on her hall, and he didn’t even know where she lived anyway. 

Wednesday dawned with a new certainty. She would go to his room. And it would be okay. Of course it would, wouldn’t it? Erik had wanted her, she knew he had. He had practically courted her, hadn’t he? He had been lost in the pleasure of it, too. He had wanted her to stay, he had wanted her to come back, she knew that. _The best fucking day of my life_ , he’d said. _You’re mine_ , he’d said. He’d said that, in the dark, while giving himself to her in return. He wanted her. He was just letting her decide what she wanted, because he was good like that. He was kind. 

And she had decided. All that was left was to tell him. 

Aethelflaed showered after class. She stood for a long time under the streaming water until her muscles loosened and eased, until the heat started to feel colder on her skin. Afterwards, she dried her hair with a blow dryer, which she almost never did, brushing and twirling it into thick waves. She didn’t put on much make-up, just a nice face cream her Mom had sent her. It made her skin look dewy and lightly glowing like she was lit from within. Then a line of eyeliner against her upper lashes, flared at the ends. Then a touch of lipstick, then the lipstick rubbed off again onto the back of her hand. _Too red_. 

Erik had already seen every part of her. He’d seen her naked and open, and he’d seen her asleep and unwashed. She had only ever used make-up to assuage her own anxiety, and so it felt like a mask more than anything, now. 

The clothes were harder. She hadn’t yet had the chance to dress with intention, not for him. It had all been so random, their encounters up till now. Now she had choice, she could arrange herself exactly as she wanted, knowing he would see her, and there was a pleasure and a thrill in that. Jeans - of course - the nice ones that didn’t fit too tight. The blue camisole, silky and loose, almost like a nightgown. If she’d had fancy underwear, she might have worn it, but she didn’t have fancy underwear, so she went with a pair of simple black briefs and no bra.

She imagined him, kissing her up against the wall of his room. Maybe he’d slide his hand under her shirt to find her naked and bare beneath. Maybe he’d laugh with pleasure at the surprise of it, and then pull the straps down on her camisole, over her shoulders, so that the shirt pooled around her waist. And she’d be half-naked and free for his hands. She thought about these things as she got dressed. 

Then it was the thick gray sweater that opened in the front, over it all, and her cutest heeled boots, leather and laced up to the ankles, and her hair, tied half up in a spiraling bun. Then she was ready. She forgot to look in the mirror before she left, somehow. She cursed herself for it as she left Winchester, for her carelessness and her nervousness. But then she took a breath and let it go, and she walked to Benfleet Hall. 

**Wednesday // 3:50 pm**

Erik wasn’t in his room. Aethelflaed knocked and listened for a long time, in case he was hiding in there, like he’d hidden from his brother before. But there was no sound. 

She didn’t want to wait where she was, not in the corridor where Haesten or Sigefrid might show up any moment. So she went back outside into the chill and found a spot on a bench near the hall’s South entrance. It was in a little copse of hedges, a glorified smokers’ circle, and it was just far enough out of the view of the path to make her feel safe and sheltered. 

But it _was_ cold as she sat there, absently scrolling on her phone and keeping one eye on the door. She hadn’t dressed for a long stake out, and she wished Erik would come. The longer she sat there, the longer her doubts edged in at her like small creatures, hungry for her self-assurance. It had been easy to feel confident that morning. But sitting there now, the ghosts that haunted Erik felt more real, and she worried for him, and a little for herself, too.

She almost missed him. She’d been reading an article on her phone, propping it up on her knees while trying to warm her hands in her own armpits, and scrolling down the screen with the tip of her nose when she needed to. So she didn’t see him until he was already going into the hall, and then it was just the back of him, retreating down the dark corridor. 

Aethelflaed stood up, fumbling her phone into her pocket and hurrying after him. 

The door was closed when she arrived, and she knocked again, three times. 

“Erik? It’s me. It’s Aethelflaed.” A moment of silence. “I know you’re in there,” she said, in a smaller voice. 

There was the sound of movement, and then another long pause. Aethelflaed pressed her hand against the cheap paneling of the door, then her ear, as if she could glide through the wood by the strength of her will alone. _What was he doing in there?_

The door opened quickly with a rush of air, and Aethelflaed was forced to stumble back, caught off guard. 

“Hi,” she said, flushing at the sight of Erik’s pale face. 

“Hey.” 

He looked….rough, she thought, like he hadn’t gotten enough sleep or something. His eyes were slightly hollowed with dark circles underneath, and when he smiled it was very distant, as if he was trying to imitate what he thought a smile should look like without having seen one. 

The sight of it forced Aethelflaed to swallow her own tender excitement.

“Are you okay?”

“Yea.” The word was slightly clipped. “I’m fine, yea. What’s up? What are you doing here?” 

Aethelflaed took a step back from the threshold, confused and self-conscious.

“I didn’t, um… I’m sorry. I thought it would okay…if I stopped by?” She felt her face twist with a question, and she saw him see it, see the uncertainty in her. _Why was he being like this_? 

He looked around behind her, as if to be certain no one else was in the hall. 

“Come in,” he said finally. She almost wanted to protest. She wanted to say _Nevermind! Fuck you, too!_ and close the door on him and walk away. But she didn’t do that. 

Erik’s smile was coming a little easier now. There was a flicker of warmth on his face as he looked at her, and she felt it stir within her body, melting some of the cold awkwardness in the room.

“I’m sorry if I’m bothering you,” she said, sitting down on the couch gingerly. 

“You’re not,” Erik said, and there was earnestness in his voice, but he didn’t come close, he didn’t sit beside her or make a move to touch her. And it was very hard not to notice that. 

“I…um…” She twisted her hands in her lap, smoothing the fabric of her sweater so that it lay neatly against her. She remembered the care she had taken in coming here, in choosing what to wear, wanting to be soft and open for him, open for his body. 

But he was hard. It was the hunted thing, she realized, the loose thing within him. It was very present inside of him now. 

“I wanted to tell you something,” she said, because she wasn’t afraid of the hard thing. That’s what she told herself.

“I have something to tell you, too.” 

“Oh?” She looked up. His arms were crossed, but his face was a bit softer than it had been before. 

“You should go first,” she said. Perhaps she was more afraid than she thought. 

“I — ” he raked a hand through his hair, and the fabric of his shirt shifted a bit on his chest so that she could see….something…rising up to his collarbone like a purple flame. 

“Erik?” She stood without thinking and moved closer to him. “What — what happened to you?”

“Nothing,” he said, his arms crossed again over his chest. “It’s nothing.” 

“You’re _hurt_ ,” she said. She could see it now, the bruise, almost hidden, like someone had beat him where it couldn’t be seen. She started to feel sick with concern. “Who did this to you?” 

She reached out to him, but he flinched, curling his body in on itself like she was the one who had hit him. 

“Don’t touch me! _Don’t - touch - me.”_

He was like a wounded animal, defensive and angry, a hungry snake ready to lash out against her. Her hand shook a little as it fell to her waist, and she wanted to speak but her voice was empty. There was the feeling of something breaking in the air, like glass, or maybe that was just inside of her.

Erik was controlling himself, straightening, looking at her with his jaw hard and set.

“It’s fine,” he said. “It’s nothing.” 

Her voice was thin when it came. “Was it Haesten? Did he find you and — do… _this_ to you? Was it Sigefrid — ?” 

“ _Stop_. It doesn’t matter, stop, please. _Please_ stop talking about it.” 

He was begging her, she realized. He was begging her, and what could she do? He’d given her everything she’d wanted, everything she’d asked for, he’d asked for nothing in return, hadn’t he? She had to give him what he wanted now. 

She turned away to sit back on the couch. She used the moment to control her face, to control the need in her own body. She wanted very much to touch him, to touch him very tenderly, and to kiss him and hold him, and make him feel safe like he had made her feel safe. But she couldn’t do that. She sat on the couch and faced him again.

“What did you want to tell me?” 

He nodded, then worried his lips against each other for the space of a breath. “I have to go home for a bit. For a little while.” 

“Oh. Like — for break?” They were both trying very hard to sound normal, she thought, almost unconcerned. But it didn’t feel normal between them. 

“Uh…probably longer than break,” Erik was saying. “A month, maybe more.” 

“Oh.”

“It’s like….a leave of absence, I guess.”

Aethelflaed bit her lip. “Is everything okay?” 

“It’s _fine_ , Aethelflaed,” Erik said, clearly frustrated with her. “It’s normal. It’s just….family stuff.” 

“But — you live pretty close, right?” Erik’s head shot up, and he looked like a scared animal again. She regretted the question, and the fear it had stoked in him. “I mean — I thought I’d heard that, that your family lived kind of close. Maybe I was wrong.” 

“It’s not too far.” He looked back down at the floor. “But — I won’t be campus or anything. You won’t see me around.” 

She didn’t know what to say. He didn’t offer anything else - no _but we should stay in touch,_ no _I want to see you when I get back_ , none of that. He said nothing. 

What else could she say? 

“Well, I…I wanted to tell you — ”

“Don’t tell me.” 

“What?” 

“Don’t tell me,” he said, and his face was blank. “Whatever it is. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to know.” 

Aethelflaed couldn’t help it. A breath of air came forcefully from her lungs, almost like a laugh. But it was anger and shame more than humor. It cut through the cold civility that hung in the air. “Why — why are you being like this? Why are you doing this? So you’re hurt and you don’t want to talk about it, but now you’re being _cruel_ , cruel and cold, and I don’t — this isn’t like you, Erik.” 

Erik’s brow was drawn heavy over his eyes. It made it hard to see what was within them. 

“You don’t know me, Aethelflaed,” he said. “You don’t know my life.”

“I know you more than you think —”

He snorted. “What, cause we spent one weekend together? Having sex? Is that how you usually get to know people?” 

Aethelflaed recoiled. “Wow.” She did laugh that time, very coldly. “Fuck you. Fuck you, Erik. As if you didn’t make the exact same choice — ”

His face was turning, it was more open now, and she thought she could see shame in his eyes. “I’m sorry.” He reached out a hand as if to placate her. “Aethelflaed, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that — I didn’t mean it.”

She was not eased. “It’s because of your dad, isn’t it? All of this? Getting beaten up, having to go home, acting all cold and hard —”

“What do you know about my dad?” Erik’s body was frozen like a statue. 

“Everything! I know everything, what he does, who he is.”

“Aethelflaed….” He spoke it like a plea and a reprimand and a curse all rolled into one. He sunk down slowly onto the opposite end of the couch, letting his face fall into his hands. “ _Fuck_. Fuck!” He slammed one fist down on the wooden arm bar of the couch. 

“What do you think this is, Erik?” Her voice was low, almost a whisper. “Why do you think I’m here? You think I care about your family —”

“You don’t understand, Aethelflaed.” He laughed without humor, leaning back into the wall, still covering his face with his hands like he could block out the world, like he could block out her. “You have no idea what you’re talking about —”

“Then tell me! Explain it to me. Tell me what’s going on, why you’re acting like a different person…” _Why you’re acting like you don’t care about me._

“Aethelflaed.” He let his hands fall. His eyes were very raw, almost red, as if he might cry. “You should not have gone searching for that information.”

“I’m not afraid of you, Erik. I’m not afraid of that — ”

“ _You should be!_ Aethelflaed - do you understand? My entire life is controlled…directed… watched—! I was off the radar for two days - _two days_ my Dad couldn’t reach me! And this is the result.” And he pulled up the hem of his t-shirt to expose the nakedness of his stomach and chest. 

It was bad. Worse than she’d imagined even. Big purple splotches bloomed up his ribs and onto his chest. Some were yellowing at the edges, and some were faded and light, like the ghosts of bruises, or the marks of something that didn’t leave a bruise but still lived beneath his skin. 

So he _had_ been hiding, just like her. Hiding from his life. She had known that, but it was different to see the result of it now, to see it and know that it was her fault, in some way. It was her doing. She thought she could feel each one of his bruises on her own skin, feel the ache and the sting of it, and if he had touched her then, she might have flinched and shuddered too. He let her look for a long moment, longer than she’d expected. Maybe he was trying to shock her, or to scare her into disgust.

But she just said, “Erik…” very softly, and he dropped the shirt, his eyes blinking rapidly. “So it was Sigefrid, then?” 

He closed his eyes, shaking his head as if exhausted by it all. “It doesn’t matter, Aethelflaed. It doesn’t matter who it was — it’s…. I have no choice in this. I have no choice in anything. _This_ is my life, and I…I have no choice.” And he let out a breath and looked at her, and his face was blank again, like an iced-over puddle. “It’s all for my own protection, of course.” 

She didn’t understand, she knew that. She was the fool in it all, she knew that, too — to think her problems so heavy while he was burdened with this, the weight of his life like a bruise on his body. But that was why she was here, wasn’t it? Because they’d given something to each other, something good, and they could do it again if they wanted, they could. She _knew_ that they could, they _had_ to be able to do that one thing, didn’t they?

Aethelflaed picked out her words carefully, as if each one was a fragile glass bead in danger of breaking. “So…they tell you who you should be with? Who you should spend your time with, who you can be in a —”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said again, and he closed his eyes as he spoke the next words. “Whether or not they did, it doesn’t matter. I would _never_ be in a relationship with you.”

And it was like stepping onto a stair that wasn’t there. It was like being hit with something she couldn’t see. She couldn’t control her reaction. It came from her like a reflex. It was all the force of her tenderness, turned in on itself to something else. 

“I didn’t say…anything about…. _wanting a relationship_.” She was standing. She didn’t remember standing, and she didn’t remember choosing to sound so vicious as she spoke. “Who said _anything_ about a relationship? I…it doesn’t matter, anyway, does it?” The lie came easy and sharp into her throat. “I’m trying to make things work with Aethelred.” 

“What—?” Erik’s face was startled, and then it turned with something like disgust. The sight of it only fueled the anger inside of her.

“My _boyfriend_ , remember? I’m gonna give it another try, with him.” 

Erik was standing now, too, although she didn’t remember watching him rise, or seeing him wince at the pain of it. “Oh…so… _that’s_ what you came here to tell me? That — that you were just _using_ me? To what? Scratch a fucking itch? And now, now you’re gonna go and pretend like nothing ever happened—?!” 

“ _You’re_ the one who said you didn’t want to be with me! You’re the one who said it _didn’t matter_. I thought none of it mattered, isn’t that what you said?” 

“That’s _not_ what I —” Erik rubbed his face roughly with his hands, cutting off his words. “No…you’re right. It doesn’t matter. You can do whatever you want. Your life isn’t my business.” 

_But this isn’t what I want_. She could have said that. _This isn’t what I want. Of course I broke up with Aethelred, of course I did, and I want to be with you, of course I do, and I don’t care about your family, I don’t care about any of that, because you’re the only man who’s ever made me feel safe. You’re the only man who’s ever made me feel loved._

But it wasn’t love. It wasn’t love, she knew that. It was two days of sex, it was chemicals in the brain, it was an _addiction_ , it was a rush, like a drug, it wasn’t love. She knew that, she _knew_ that. Even if she felt something different. 

Aethelflaed realized then that it was for the best. All of this. It was too intense, this feeling. It was like a fire blazing through its fuel, too fast and too hot. It was a pot boiling over, and she couldn’t take her hand away, and she was burning and burning and burning. 

She took her hand away. 

“No,” she said. “It isn’t any of your business.”

Erik’s eyes were still hard, his jaw tensed, as if trying to hold back some words by the brute force of his teeth.

“I think you should leave,” he said. 

“Yea. I think I should.” 

She turned towards the door, and he made to follow her. “I don’t need you to walk me out,” she said, not looking at him. 

“I wasn’t going to.” 

“Good.” 

She pulled open the door and left the room, and she thought for a moment he might slam it behind her. But he didn’t, and she turned to see him standing there, watching her with his eyes hollow and dark, like they’d been when she’d first arrived. 

“I’m sorry for wasting your time,” she said. “I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused you.” She spoke the words hard and clipped like a lie, sharp like a weapon, even though they were the truth. She _was_ sorry, she was sorry for everything, even as she ached with want, wishing he was sorry too. 

“Don’t burden yourself, Aethelflaed,” he said. He didn’t even say the sorry as a lie. “I’m sure you have your own problems to worry about.” 

Aethelflaed had the strange, sudden urge to laugh - to laugh truly, not in anger but in hilarity - as if this was surely all just a joke, a jest. It was, wasn’t it? Weren’t they just acting like this? Wasn’t it all just a performance of pain? Maybe her laughter would melt the hardness of him, and they would touch each other again, and they would remember. 

But they hadn’t touched each other at all, and if she had touched him, it would have caused him pain - actual physical pain. There wasn’t anything to laugh about, not really. 

“I guess I won’t see you around then.” 

And Erik didn’t say anything. And Aethelflaed left. 

**NINE WEEKS LATER**

**Wednesday // 12:15 pm** ****

“I saved you some cake,” Aldhelm said, sliding a piece of the kitchen’s signature Black Forest Gateau across the table towards Aethelflaed. “They were almost out.” 

Aethelflaed set her tray down and sat in the chair opposite from him, putting her bag on the seat next to her so as to offer a little buffer between herself and anyone else who might take up space at the long table. 

“Thanks,” she said. She eyed the cake, and then her plate loaded with chicken caesar salad, and she decided to start with the cake. 

They’d been hanging out more, her and Aldhelm. She thought they might have been friends, although it was hard to say. It had started with a project in Odda’s Intro Gov and Policy Class - they’d been assigned to team up on the topic of “Socialist Programs in U.S. Governmental Policy,” and Aethelflaed had dreaded the assignment. Ever since the break up with Aethelred, she’d avoided all those boys like the plague. She could imagine what things Aethelred said about her behind closed doors, and perhaps behind some open ones as well. 

But to her pleasure, Aldhelm had been easy to work with, generous with his time and effort, and most of all, kind to her in a simple, unflustered way. It wasn’t exactly a surprise when she thought about it - she had always thought him smarter than the rest of them. 

Now they shared meals sometimes, on the way to or from class, or met in the library as accountability buddies in studying. 

“Does Aethelred know about us?” Aethelflaed had asked, a couple weeks ago, as they took a break from working in the library to snack in the lounge room.

Aldhelm raised an eyebrow. “What about us?” 

“That we…hang out sometimes. Study together and stuff.”

Aldhelm swallowed a bite of food and fixed her with a dry look. “I haven’t gone out of my way to bring it to his attention, no.”

Aethelflaed nodded. 

“If I did,” Aldhelm continued. “He’d probably act like the whole thing was his idea.” 

Aethelflaed snorted. “He would, wouldn’t he?” 

“Definitely.” 

And they’d laughed a bit together at that, the thought of Aethelred’s ego. 

Spending time with Aldhelm was simple and unstressful. Aethelflaed hadn’t cared about making him like her, because she’d assumed he already hated her. And then once she’d realized he didn’t, it was easier in a way, as if she was already grandfathered in and allowed to be herself. 

On top of all that, Aldhelm didn’t know about Erik. And in some ways, that was the greatest gift of all. 

It had been hard - really hard - in the weeks after…what? _After she’d gotten obsessed with some guy who didn’t want her in his life._ No, no, that was the bitterness talking, the old anger and self-hatred, and she was kinder about it now, to herself and to him. She understood now that it was more complicated than that, and she tried to forgive herself for the pain of it all. And she tried to forgive him. 

But still, it _had_ fucking sucked. 

Hild, Beocca, Thyra - the friends she relied on most - they were also the ones who knew every detail of her pain, who had wanted to help, but in helping had sometimes made it worse with their concern and their care. It’s hard to accept tenderness when you feel like a fool and a villain, and Aethelflaed had felt like a fool and villain most of the time in those early days. 

They had tried to talk her through it in the beginning. Hild had wanted to know precisely what had happened - what Erik had said, what Aethelflaed had said - as if there was some sort of puzzle that could be worked out, some riddle she could uncover at the center of it all. 

“He said he didn’t want to be with me, Hild.” Aethelflaed had said. She’d been in a low moment, exhausted by holding in tears she felt ashamed to shed, sick on self-disgust. 

“Is that exactly what he said?” Hild had asked, patiently. 

“He said, _I would never be in a relationship with you.”_ And Aethelflaed was ashamed at that even, to have memorized the words, to have repeated them over and over in her mind like a looped video. 

Hild had been silent for a long time. 

“Maybe it did matter.” 

“What?” 

“The stuff with his family, maybe it did matter, after all.” 

And Aethelflaed said nothing. She hadn’t told Hild everything - not about Erik’s beating and the bruises. That seemed almost too tender, too private to share. It was his pain, not hers, even if she had caused it, in a way, even if it was her fault. She didn’t tell Hild either of the lie she had told, about Aethelred, how she had used it to try to wound Erik in return. She was too ashamed of that. But all the not-telling made it so she couldn’t share the true shape of what had happened, and so in the end, she bore the full weight of it alone. 

Beocca had a different take, when Aethelflaed had told Thyra and him as much as she could bear to, an effort to stave off their concerned inquiries. Or maybe it was just the same take, told in a different way. 

“Do you think…” he asked, his eyes creased with thought. “Maybe he was, you know, white fanging you?” 

Aethelflaed almost laughed. “ _What?_ ”

“You know, like, white fanging.” 

“I don’t know what that means, Beocca. Is that some sort of…sex thing?” 

“Jesus, Aethelflaed, no!” He winced. “Get your mind out of the gutter.” 

“You’re the one who said it!” 

“No, like _White Fang_ , the movie about the kid and the wolf?” 

Aethelflaed shook her head, confused and yet somewhat grateful that they weren’t talking about Erik anymore. “I’ve never seen it.”

“This boy, he has to drive his dog away, be all mean to it and stuff, because he can’t take care of it anymore.” 

“So…I’m the dog in this situation?” 

“Yes. No, I mean —” Beocca rubbed his face, and Thyra just looked bemusedly between them. “I mean, maybe Erik didn’t want it to end either.” Aethelflaed took a tender breath into her chest. "Maybe he was pushing you away, cause…he was scared for you, or something.” 

Aethelflaed thought for a long moment, trying hard not to feel very sad at Beocca’s words. Wasn’t that the worse part of it all, the fakeness of it, the performance of it? She had known it even then, even as she participated in it. She had known it wasn’t wholly real. 

“I think maybe we white fanged each other,” she said, finally. 

And she had changed the subject soon after. 

So, yes, it was nice now to spend time with Aldhelm - with someone who knew nothing about Erik or Sigefrid, or mob bosses, or her own foolish broken heart. There was a safety with him, safety in building a relationship that wasn’t about sex, that wasn’t raging through her like a storm, or a drug, or a fire gone out of control. She was grateful for that, even though she sometimes woke in the night, her skin hot and tight, with wetness between her legs, her body aching with the memory of something carried from her dream. 

Sometimes it made her sad, and she let silent tears drain down her face into the fabric of her pillow, and hoped Hild didn’t hear her sniffling in the darkness. And sometimes she touched herself, and hoped Hild didn’t hear that either. She would slide her fingers across the slickness of herself, and then into herself, trying to feel into her own heat, trying to remember the feeling of being swallowed by her own pleasure and the pleasure of another. And it was her body, it was a feeling that belonged to her and only her, it was hers alone, so she didn’t think of Erik. Except for the times when she did.

“I’ll see you tomorrow? In Odda’s class?” Aldhelm was standing up, gathering his tray and his bag to leave. 

“Yea,” Aethelflaed said, flushing slightly at the turn of mind he had startled her out of. “Sorry,” she added. “Sorry for being poor company.” 

“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re not poor company.” And he smiled. It was very different from Erik’s smile. It was milder, more self-effacing, the humor smothered slightly behind wry self-control. But it was warm, and it put her at ease. It made her feel safe. 

She smiled back. “See ya.” 

**Thursday // 4:30 pm**

Aethelflaed trudged up the stairs to Winchester’s third floor, then turned down the hall towards her room. She didn’t sneak past Aethelred’s door anymore, not like she had done for the first few weeks after their break up. When they did run into each other - in the dining hall, or at a random party, or (worst case scenario) on the way to the shower - he simply pretended not to know her or see her at all. And that worked just fine for her. 

But Aethelred wasn’t in the hallway today. The door to her room was locked - Hild must have been out - so she took out her key. But before she could put it to the lock, the door opened from the inside, revealing a stunningly gorgeous woman who Aethelflaed had never seen before. 

She was taken aback for a moment, left speechless at the sight of this stranger emerging from her own room. The woman had thick, dark hair, tied back into a long braid, and she wore several layers of loose, drapey cardigans over her deep blue maxi-dress. 

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Iseult.” She gave a little wave rather than a handshake.

Aethelflaed blinked. “Hi.” She forgot to introduce herself. 

“I was just heading out, but I’m sure I’ll see you around.” Iseult looked back into the room over her shoulder. “See you tomorrow, Hild.” And then she was sweeping down the corridor, breezing past Aethelflaed with a metallic clink of her long layered necklaces and a fleeting scent of Lavender and Rose. 

Aethelflaed just stood there for a second, vaguely wondering if Iseult had been a vision, conjured up by some fey spirit. But then she saw Hild moving, and she pushed past the doorway into the room. 

“Who was that?” She asked. Hild was sitting on her bed, and Aethelflaed got the sense that she was trying very hard to look casual. 

“Iseult,” she said. 

“Yea, no, I got that part. But like…who is she?” 

“A friend.” 

Aethelflaed was naturally inclined to take Hild at her word - steady, forthright Hild who never had anything to hide. But Hild’s cheeks were a little pink, and Aethelflaed noticed that she kept biting her bottom lip nervously. 

“Just a friend?” 

“Well…” Hild shrugged, casting her eyes across the floor as if there was something very interesting to be found in the stained carpet. 

“More than a friend?” Aethelflaed suggested. 

“Maybe. I don’t know yet.” 

“Do you not want to talk about it right now?” Hild had become very good at asking that question in the aftermath of Erik, and Aethelflaed was pleased to be able to use it herself now. 

Hild smiled gratefully. “Maybe. I just don’t want to jinx it.” 

“Well consider it thoroughly unjinxed,” Aethelflaed said, and she flopped down onto her bed with a sigh of relaxation. 

Hild was still smiling shyly, but her face started to turn with a more serious note. 

“Hey…uh—” she said, and Aethelflaed felt a little lilt of anxiety in her belly. “You should know that…I heard Erik is back around. He’s back on campus.” 

Aethelflaed turned her face towards her pillow, tucking her chin into her hands. She took a deep breath before she spoke again. “I didn’t know you and Erik were in the same social circles.” 

“We’re not,” Hild said, and Aethelflaed understood. This was information Hild had sought out, or else information she’d had someone else had seek out for her benefit, and for Aethelflaed’s. 

“Thank you. For letting me know.” Aethelflaed was quiet for a little while. 

“Do you not want to talk about it right now?” Hild asked. 

Aethelflaed turned her head and smiled at her ruefully. “No, it’s okay, I think. I’m okay right now.” 

Hild nodded, then prepared her next question. “Do you think you’d be okay…if you ran into him?” 

Aethelflaed turned over to look up at the ceiling, tracing the edge of it with her eyes, the shape of it where it met the wall in a crease of shadow and dust. 

“Yea, I think I’d be okay.” 

“You’re not angry at him anymore?” 

She bit her lip, trying not to let herself be flustered by the questions. They were good, they were good questions, and she needed to know the answers if there was any chance of running into him. “No,” Aethelflaed answered. “No…I don’t know if I was ever _really_ angry at him. I mean…I know I acted like I was. It was easy to act like that, even to myself. But I think it was really… _me_ I was angry with, not him.” 

“Hmm.” 

“And…now I’m sure you want to ask me _why?_ ”

“I have no agenda.” Hild shrugged and shook her head slightly. “But…if you were interested in telling me why —”

Aethelflaed let out a laugh. “‘Cause it’s so _stupid_ , Hild! All of it was _so stupid_. That I was in this awful, terrible relationship, and I couldn’t even see it! Even though you knew it, everyone knew it except for me! And so what, I needed some guy to… _save me_? To save me from myself? And now, now my whole life is different, and it’s better, and I don’t know if it would be like this, if not for him and that’s _pathetic_ , that’s fucking pathetic, Hild, and you know it.” 

Hild laughed a bit at Aethelflaed’s consternation, her self-flagellation. It was a kindly sort of laugh. “But… _he_ didn’t really do anything, did he? I mean, you made the choice to change your life. _He_ didn’t change you.” 

Aethelflaed felt the sadness in her chest again then. She looked at Hild, blinking slowly. “But he did. He did change me. I mean….he gave me something. I chose to accept it, you’re right about that, but…he gave it to me. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s true.” 

“…and that makes you feel stupid?” 

Aethelflaed looked back up at the ceiling. She had to blink a little harder now to keep her face together. 

“You’re allowed to let people change you,” Hild said softly. “I think…it’s different than…changing _for_ someone. It doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t make you stupid.” 

_But it’s more than that. It’s worse than that. The worst part is, he suffered for it. He suffered so my stupid life could change_. 

But Aethelflaed just thought those words, she didn’t say them.

“What if he’s angry with me?” She asked instead. 

“What reason would he have to be angry with you?” 

Aethelflaed swallowed. “I don’t know,” she lied. 

**Friday // 4:30 pm** ****

It happened on Friday, of course. It was always on Fridays - Friday afternoons in particular -as if that was somehow the agreed upon moment, decided by time and space, arranged by the Fates. 

Or maybe that was just when their schedules aligned. It was hard to say. 

It was in the same place, too, outside the library, on the edge of the back quad. It was near the rhododendron bush, which had just started to open its bright pink blossoms into the spring sunshine, reaching waxy leaves like stiff fingers across the edge of the path. 

Aethelflaed saw him coming towards her, and the sight of it sent something sharp up through her core. She stopped walking on reflex alone, as if she might turn around, pretend she hadn’t seen him, walk in the other direction. But she couldn’t do that. 

Had he seen her, too? She wondered for a moment if he would ignore her, pretend he didn’t know her, let his eyes slide over her like water over a stone. She almost expected it - it had become so normal with Aethelred. She almost wanted it, she thought a bit desperately, as they came closer.

But Erik didn’t ignore her. His eyes caught hers, like a bramble snagging on a hem, and he smiled. 

That was actually kind of worse. 

“Hi,” he said, stopping up short several feet away from her. She followed his lead, letting the distance remain. 

“Hey.” She thought she might have been smiling, but she couldn’t be certain. Her face felt stretched in a weird way. 

He looked better than the last time she’d seen him. His face was less hollow, his eyes a little brighter in a good way. His beard was thinner, as if it had been shaved and was only recently allowed to come back in.

“Back on campus?” She asked, which was a stupid question, but it was all she could think of to fill the silence. 

“Yea.” He ran his hand over the strap of his bag a few times in a quick, repetitive motion. She realized that he was nervous like she was nervous. “Had to come back for finals,” he said. “I’m not allowed to fail out.” His voice was a little hard on the words, but she didn’t think the hardness was for her.

She nodded. It seemed to Aethelflaed that they had exhausted everything they could say to each other after only two exchanges. She was almost ready to say “See ya,” and push past him on the path, and then quickly find a private corner where she could press her hands hard against her eyes for several long moments. 

But then Erik took a step closer to her and spoke again.

“You okay?” He asked, and she blinked to hide her confusion. “I mean, like - are you doing alright? Things are good for you?” 

“Yea. Yea, they’re alright.” She gave a thin smile. 

His answering smile was equally taut. “So things are going well then, with Aethelred?” 

Aethelflaed swallowed. Of all of it, that was what she regretted the most - that lie. It had not been kind - not to him, not to herself. Erik’s words had been hurtful, that was true, but she thought now that he had been trying to be kind. He had been trying to be honest, in his own hurt way. 

“No,” she said. “No, I’m not with Aethelred.” She looked up, directly into Erik’s eyes. “We haven’t been together in…a while.” 

He nodded and looked down, but his face seemed a little less strained, and Aethelflaed thought — hoped — that she had made her meaning known. 

“What about you?” she asked, a bit urgently. “Are you…seeing anyone?”

“No.” Erik rubbed the back of his head. His eyes were creased, as if the question didn’t quite make sense to him. “I’m not seeing anyone.” 

And Aethelflaed thought then that they understood each other, finally. 

“Erik —” she said. She fixed her eyes on a point just off from his face, where his hand was holding the strap of his bag. “I’m really sorry. About everything.” 

He nodded again, looking away, his nostrils slightly flared. Aethelflaed got the sense that he was trying hard to control his face, and she let her eyes drift further off of him for a moment, so as to give him the privacy of it. 

“It’s okay.” He smiled. “Hey, got any new papers that are worth a read?” 

He was trying to make the moment light, and Aethelflaed let him. She laughed. 

“I’m joking,” he said. “You’re never allowed to let me read a paper of yours ever again.”

Aethelflaed laughed again, but it was an achy laugh. 

“I’m sorry, too,” he said finally. “I — I’m sorry.” 

She let out a breath. “I know.” 

They stood for a few more moments, both looking at the ground around each other’s feet. 

Erik said, “See ya around?” 

And she said, “Yea. See ya.”

And then he smiled at her once more and walked off, towards the library. And Aethelflaed walked home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few things: 
> 
> 1\. Thank you for reading this weirdness! I hope you enjoyed it!! 
> 
> 2\. yes, that was a shameless Fleabag rip-off. I just really love Fleabag, and at this point, the whole thing is just a weird pastiche mash-up, so I figured…¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> 3\. I wrote this ridiculous bit, and I’m pretty sure this is the only place it belongs: 
> 
> me: and it was sad. the end. 
> 
> also me: okay, but you know these two are like — d e f i n i t e l y — gonna fuck again in about 6 months time, like coming back for sophomore year, Aethelflaed’s had a nice fling at her summer job and that was really great for her, she’s tweaking a lot less about life in general, and Erik’s been on his good-boy juice for a while (and by that I mean his bad-boy juice, and by that I mean his good-boy-from-a-bad-family-who-has-to-be-extra-good-in-a-weird-way-to-play-into-a-twisted-moral-code-that’s-mostly-about-family-honor juice) pOINT IS, his family is less on his back these days, so ANYWAY, they run into each other at a party and they’re a little drunk and also like VERY HOT for each other and they’re like “this is fine” “we can do this” “its just a fling” “it doesn’t mean anything” even though they’re actually both secretly going HARD on their “one-that-got-away” bullshit, and hiding it from each other, and so they’re just projecting and projecting and projecting shit while also having hot sex, MEANWHILE Aldhelm is like *sigh* but it is a very quiet, very self-controlled sigh because he is NOT the kind of guy to whine about being in the “friend zone”, but still, he will allow himself one (1) private sigh behind several closed doors, (and lets be honest, AEthelflaed needs to make a few more mistakes and enjoy singledom for a while before she is ready for what Aldhelm has to offer), and mEANWHILE, Hild’s like “why are u in this strange mood Aethelflaed?” But Aethelflaed’s not telling her cause she knows Hild will be like “that’s an objectively bad idea and u know it” and ANYWAY Hild has less time for Aethelflaed’s drama these days because SHE AND ISEULT ARE IN LOVE and that is VERY IMPORTANT, and anyway it’s all gonna end really really badly someone might actually die this time, the end. 
> 
> 4\. Yes, I might actually write some of that story and try to stuff it with every possible modern!crackship that I can. Yes, it is ABSOLUTELY classic WildWren BACK ON MY BULLSHIT trash.
> 
> 5\. THIS is the real reason Erik cannot be suffered to live, he is actually just a cute little cockroach who continues popping up to mess up Aethelflaed’s life with his sad boy angst and apparently — FOR SOME UNFATHOMABLE REASON — I live for it. 
> 
> 6\. Love you all.


End file.
